更多"[单选题]Passage 2
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[单选题]Passage 2
Scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture--the language we speak, the values weabsorb--shapes the brain, and are rethinking findings derived from studies of Westerners. To takeone recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedlyrepresents the self: it is active when we ( "we" being the Americans in the study) think of our ownidentity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different. The "me"circuit hummed not only when they thought whether a particular adjective described themselves, butalso when they considered whether it described their mother. The Westerners showed no suchoverlap between self and mom. Depending whether one lives in a culture that views the self asautonomous and unique or as connected to and part of a larger whole, this neural circuit takes onquite different functions.
"Cultural neuroscience," as this new field is called, is about discovering such differences. Someof the findings, as with the "me/mom" circuit, buttress longstanding notions of cultural differences.
For instance, it is a cultural cliche that Westerners focus on individual objects while East Asians payattention to context and background (another manifestation of the individualism-collectivism split).
Sure enough, when shown complex, busy scenes, Asian-Americans and non-Asian-Americansrecruited different brain regions. The Asians showed more activity in areas that processfigure-ground relations--holistic context--while the Americans showed more activity in regions thatrecognize objects.
Psychologist Nalini Ambady of Tufts found something similar when she and colleagues showeddrawings of people in a submissive pose (head down, shoulders hunched) or a dominant one (armscrossed, face forward) to Japanese and Americans. The brain′s dopamine-fueled reward circuitbecame most active at the sight of the stance--dominant for Americans, submissive for Japanese--that each volunteer′s culture most values, they reported in 2009. This raises an obviouschicken-and-egg question, but the smart money is on culture shaping the brain, not vice versa.
Cultural neuroscience wouldn′t be making waves if it found neurobiological bases only forwell-known cultural differences. It is also uncovering the unexpected. For instance, a 2006 studyfound that native Chinese speakers use a different region of the brain to do simple arithmetic (3 + 4)or decide which number is larger than native English speakers do, even though both use Arabicnumerals. The Chinese use the circuits that process visual and spatial information and planmovements (the latter may be related to the use of the abacus). But English speakers use languagecircuits. It is as if the West conceives numbers as just words, but the East imbues them withsymbolic, spatial freight. (Insert cliche about Asian math geniuses.) "One would think that neuralprocesses involving basic mathematical computations are universal," says Ambady, but they "seemto be culture-specific."
Not to be the skunk at this party, but I think it′ s important to ask whether neuroscience revealsanything more than we already know from, say, anthropology. For instance, it′s well known thatEast Asian cultures prize the collective over the individual, and that Americans do the opposite.
Does identifying brain correlates of those values offer any extra insight After all, it′s not as ifanyone thought those values are the result of something in the liver.
Ambady thinks cultural neuro-science does advance understanding. Take the me/mom finding,which, she argues, "attests to the strength of the overlap between self and people close to you incollectivistic cultures and the separation in individualistic cultures. It is important to push theanalysis to the level of the brain." Especially when it shows how fundamental cultural differencesare--so fundamental, perhaps, that "universal" notions such as human rights, democracy, and thelike may be no such thing.
Which of the following may best describe the author′s attitude towards universal culturalconcepts in the last paragraph
A.Doubtful.
B.Positive.
C.Negative.
D.Neutral.
[单选题]Many scientists have been probing psychological problems.
A.solving
B.exploring
C.settling
D.handling
[单选题]Passage 1
Plants and animals that have been studied carefully seem to have built-in clocks. These biological clocks, as they are called, usually are not quite exact in measuring time. However, they work pretty well because they are "reset" each day, when the sun comes up.
Do pigeons use their biological clocks to help them find directions from the sun? We can keep pigeons in a room lit only by lamps. And we can program the lighting to produce artificial "days",different from the day outside. After a while we have shifted their clocks. Now we take them far away from home and let them go on a sunny day. Most of thegn start out as if they know just which way to go, but choose a wrong direction. They have picked a direction that would be correct for the position of the sun and the time of day according to their shifted clocks.
It is known and experimented that homing pigeons can tell directions by the sun. But what happens when the sky is darkly overcast by clouds and no one can see where the sun is? Then the pigeons still find their way home. The salne experiment has been repeated many times on sunny days and the result was always the same. But on very overcast days clock-shifted pigeons are just as good as normal pigeons in starting out in the right directions. So it seems that pigeons also have some extra sense of direction to use when they cannot see the sun.
Naturally, people have wondered whether pigeons might have a built-in compass—something that would tell them about the directions of the earth's magnetic field. One way to test that idea would be to see if a pigeon's sense of direction can be fooled by a magnet attached to its back.
With a strong magnet close by, a compass can no longer tell direction.
To test the idea, a group of ten pigeons had strong little magnet bars attached to their backs.
Another group carried brass bars instead which were not magnetic. In a number of experiments,both groups were taken away from home and let go. On sunny days none of the magnet-pigeons was fooled. They were just as good as the brass-pigeons in starting out in the right direction toward home. On cloudy, overcast days, however, with no sun the brass-pigeons chose the right direction,but the magnet-pigeons were in trouble. They later started out in different directions and acted completely lost.
Which of the following can best describe the organization of the passage?
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A.Questions are raised first and then experiments to answer them are cited.
B.Opinions are given first and then evidences against them are quoted.
C.Statements come first and examples supporting them follow.
D.People's long held beliefs are cited first and exceptions come after.
[Part III Reading Comprehension]
What do we learn about those who have been unemployed for a long time?
A.They stop looking for work due to the loss Of identity .
B.unemployment benefits can lift up their spirits.
C.They may die earlier than those With jobs.
D.Retirement can make them happier .
[单选题]Different hypotheses have been put forward to explain why UFOs exist.
A.sentence
B.comments
C.conclusions
D.theories
[单选题]Nuclear power plants in Europe have been forced to____electricity production becauseof warmer-than-usual seawater.
A.cutin
B.cut off
C.cut out
D.cut back
[单选题]I have been trying to quit smoking.
A.give up
B.pick up
C.build up
D.take up
[单选题]We have been through some rough times together.
A.long
B.happy
C.difficult
D.short
