Dub-dub, your examples 1 and 2 wouldn't be on the SAT (I'm assuming it follows the format of similar problems on GMAT, which I've taught students for in the past (I found doing the practice tests supplied by ETS for GMAT and GRE quite fun)). The sentences in GMAT are designed to be stand-alone sentences rather than sentences taken from a text which may refer grammatically to the rest of the text. In other words pronoun reference to anything outside the sentence you're given is not allowed. So if there's no antecedent in the sentence, the sentence is wrong.
From Bryan A. Garner's "A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage" (page 62 under the heading Antecedents, False):
C. With Possessives A noun in the possessive case is not a suitable antecedent for a pronoun because the possessive makes the noun functionally an adjective. The parts of speech of an antecedent and its referent must match. "Indeed, the Court's reading of the plain language of the Fourth Amendment is incapable of explaining even its own holding in this case." What is the subject of is, the antecedent of its? The intended antecedent is court, but the possessive court's is merely an adjective modifying reading, and is incapable of acting as the antecedent of it, or as the subject of it. [Read Indeed, the Court in its reading ....]/"There may have been inimical voices raised among the jury, such as the foreman's, who [read such as that of the foreman, who]had just had an unpleasant brush with the bailiff." See APPOSITIVE (A), DEICTIC TERMS, POSSESSIVES (H) & it.
Bingley
