Our senses aren't just delivering a strict view of what’s going on in the world; they're affected by what’s going on in our heads. A new study finds that hungry people see food-related words more clearly than people who've just eaten.
Psychologists have known for decades that what's going on inside our head affects our senses. For example, poorer children think coins are larger than they are, and hungry people think pictures of food are brighter. Rémi Radel of University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France, wanted to investigate how this happens.
Does it happen right away as the brain receives signals from the eyes or a little later as the brain’s high-1evel thinking processes get involved. Radel recruited 42 students with a normal body mass index. On the day of his or her test, each student was told to arrive at the lab at noon after three or four hours of not eating. Then they were told there was a delay. Some were told to come back in 10 minutes; others were given an hour to get lunch first. So half the students were hungry when they did the experiment and the other half had just eaten.
For the experiment, the participant looked at a computer screen. One by one, 80 words flashed on the screen for about l/300th of a second each. They flashed at so small a size that the students could only consciously perceive. A quarter of the words were food-related. After each word, each person was asked how bright the word was and asked to choose which of two words they’d seen-a food-related word like cake or a neutral word like boat. Each word appeared too briefly for the participant to really read it.
Hungry people saw the food-related words as brighter and were better at identifying food- related words. Because the word appeared too quickly for them to be reliably seen, this means that the difference is in perception, not in thinking processes, Radel says. "This is something great to me. Humans can really perceive what they need or what they strive for. From the experiment, I know that our brain can really be at the disposal of our motives and needs. "Radel says.
1.Why was there a delay on the day of the experiment?
A. Because hungry people needed time to fill their stomach.
B. Because Radel wanted to create two groups of testers, hungry and non-hungry.
C. Because noon was not the right time for any experiment.
D. Because Radel needed time to select participants in terms of body mass index.
2.What does the writer want to tell us?
A. Human’s senses aren’t just delivering a strict view of what’s going on in the world.
B. What’s perceived by our senses affects our way of thinking.
C. Human brains can really be at the disposal of our motives and needs.
D. Thinking processes guarantee the normal functions of our senses.
3.What can we infer from the passage?
A. 42 participants are too small a number for a serious investigation.
B. An experiment with hungry and non-hungry participants is not reliable.
C. Our thinking processes are independent of our senses.
D. Humans can perceive what they need without involving high-level thinking processes
Taste is such a subjective matter that we don’t usually conduct preference tests for food. The most you can say about anyone’s preference is that it’s one person’s opinion. But because the two big cola companies—Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola are marketed so aggressively, we’ve wondered how big a role taste preference actually plays in brand loyalty. We set up a taste test that challenged people who identified themselves as either Coca-Cola or Pepsi fans: Find your brand in a blind tasting.
We invited staff volunteers who had a strong liking for either Coca-Cola Classic (传统型) or Pepsi, Diet (低糖的) Coke, or Diet Pepsi. These were people who thought they’d have no trouble telling their brand from the other brand.
We eventually located 19 regular cola drinkers and 27 diet cola drinkers. Then we fed them four unidentified samples of cola one at a time, regular colas for the one group, diet versions for the other. We asked them to tell us whether each sample was Coke or Pepsi; then we analyzed the records statistically to compare the participants’ choices with what mere guess-work could have accomplished.
Getting all four samples right was a tough test, but not too tough, we thought, for people who believed they could recognize their brand. In the end, only 7 out of 19 regular cola drinkers correctly identified their brand of choice in all four trials. The diet-cola drinkers did a little worse----only 7 of 27 identified all four samples correctly.
While both groups did better than chance would predict, nearly half the participants in each group made the wrong choice two or more times. Two people got all four samples wrong. Overall, half the participants did about as well on the last round of tasting as on the first, so tiredness, or taste burnout, was not a factor. Our preference test results suggest that only a few Pepsi participants and Coke fans may really be able to tell their favorite brand by taste and price.
1.According to the passage the preference test was conducted in order to ________.
A. show that a person’s opinion about taste is mere guess-work
B. compare the ability of the participants in choosing their drinks
C. find out the role taste preference plays in a person’s drinking
D. reveal which cola is more to the liking of the drinkers
2. It is implied but not stated in the first paragraph that ________.
A. the competition between the two colas is very strong
B. blind tasting is necessary for identifying fans
C. the purpose of taste tests is to promote the sale of colas
D. the improvement of quality is the chief concern of the two cola companies
3.The word “burnout” (Line3, Para. 5) refers to the state of _________.
A. being seriously burnt in the skin
B. being badly damaged by fire
C. being unable to function because of excessive use
D. being unable to burn for lack of fuel
4.The author’s purpose in writing this passage is to ________.
A. emphasize that taste and price are closely related to each other
B. recommend that blind tasting be introduced in the quality control of colas
C. show that taste preference is highly subjective
D. argue that taste testing is an important marketing strategy
People have been painting pictures for at least 30,000 years. The earliest pictures were painted by people who hunted animals. They used to paint pictures of the animals they wanted to catch and kill. Pictures of this kind have been found on the walls of caves in France and Spain. No one knows why they were painted there. Perhaps the painters thought that their pictures would help them to catch these animals. Or perhaps human beings have always wanted to tell stories according to pictures.
About 5,000 years ago, the Egyptians and other people in the Near East began to use pictures as kind of writing. They drew simple pictures or signs to represent things and ideas, and also to represent the sounds of their language. The signs these people used became a kind of alphabet.
The Egyptians used to record information and to tell stories by putting picture writing and pictures together. When an important person died, scenes and stories from his life were painted and carved on the walls of the place where he was buried. Some of these pictures are like modern comic strip stories. It has been said that Egypt is the home of the comic strip. But, for the Egyptians, pictures still had magic power. So they did not try to make their way of writing simple. The ordinary people could not understand it.
By the year 1,000 BC, people who lived in the area around the Mediterranean Sea had developed a simpler system of writing. The signs they used were very easy to write, and there were fewer of them than in the Egyptian system. This was because each sign, or letter, represented only one sound in their language. The Greeks developed this system and formed the letters of the Greek alphabet. The Romans copied the idea, and the Roman alphabet is now used all over the world.
These days, we can write down a story, or record information, without using pictures. But we still need pictures of all kinds: drawing, photographs, signs and diagrams. We find them everywhere: in books and newspapers, in the street, and on the walls of the places where we live and work. Pictures help us to understand and remember things more easily, and they can make a story much more interesting.
1.Pictures of animals were painted on the walls of caves in France and Spain because______.
A. the hunters wanted to see the pictures
B. the painters were animal lovers
C. the painters wanted to show imagination
D. the pictures were thought to be helpful
2.The Greek alphabet was simpler than the Egyptian system for all the following reasons EXCEPT that______.
A. the former was easy to write
B. there were fewer signs in the former
C. the former was easy to pronounce
D. each sign stood for only one sound
3.Which of the following statements is TRUE?
A. The Egyptian signs later became a particular alphabet.
B. The Egyptians liked to write comic strip stories.
C. The Roman alphabet was developed from the Egyptian one.
D. The Greeks copied their writing system from the Egyptians.
4. In the last paragraph, the author thinks that pictures ______.
A. should be made comprehensible
B. should be made interesting
C. are of much use in our life
D. have disappeared from our life
When she was twelve, Maria made her first important decision about the course of her life. She decided that she wanted to continue her education. Most girls from middle-class families chose to stay home after primary school, though some attended private Catholic "'finishing" schools. There they learned a little about music, art, needlework, and how to make polite conversation. This was not the sort of education that interested Maria or her mother. By this time, she had begun to take her studies more seriously. She read constantly and brought her books everywhere. One time she even brought her math book to the theater and tried to study in the dark.
Maria knew that she wanted to go on learning in a serious way. That meant attending the public high school, something that very few girls did. In Italy at the time, there were two types of high schools: the "classical" schools and the "technical" schools. In the classical schools, the students followed a very traditional program of studies, with courses in Latin and Greek language and literature, and Italian literature and history. The few girls who continued studying after primary school usually chose these schools.
Maria, however, wanted to attend a technical school. The technical schools were more modern than the classical schools and they offered courses in modern languages, mathematics, science, and accounting. Most people including Maria's father believed that girls would never be able to understand these subjects. Furthermore, they did not think it was proper for girls to study them.
Maria did not care if it was proper or not. Math and science were the subjects that interested her most. But before she could sign up for the technical school, she had to win her father's approval. She finally did, with her mother's help, though for many years after, there was tension in the family. Maria's father continued to oppose her plans, while her mother helped her.
In 1883, at age thirteen, Maria entered the "Regia Scuola Tecnica Michelangelo Buonarroti" in Rome. Her experience at this school is difficult for us to imagine. Though the courses included modern subjects, the teaching methods were very traditional. Learning consisted of memorizing long lists of facts and repeating them back to the teacher. Students were not supposed to ask questions or think for themselves in any way. Teachers were very demanding, discipline in the classroom was strict, and punishment was severe for those who failed to achieve or were disobedient.
1.In those days, most Italian girls________.
A. went to classical schools
B. went to "finishing" schools
C. did not go to high school
D. went to technical schools
2.Maria's father probably________.
A. had very modern views about women
B. had very traditional views about women
C. had no opinion about women
D. thought women could not learn Latin
3.High school teachers in Italy in those days were________.
A. very modern B. very intelligent
C. quite scientific D. quite strict
4.We can infer from this passage that________.
A. girls usually attended private primary schools
B. only girls attended classical schools
C. girls did not like going to school
D. Maria was a girl of strong will
Checks have largely taken the place of money as a means of 36 , for they are widely accepted everywhere. 37 this is very 38 for both buyer and seller, it should not be forgotten that checks are not real money: they are quite 39 in themselves. A shop-keeper runs a certain 40 when he accepts a check and he is quite 41 his rights if, on occasion, he 42 to do so. People do not always know this and are 43 if their good faith is called in question. A wealthy friend of mine told me he had an extremely 44 experience.
One day he decided to buy a particularly fine pearl necklace at a famous jewelry shop which keeps a large__45 of precious stones and asked if he could pay 46 check, the assistant said that this was quite 47 . But the moment my friend signed his name, he was invited into the manager’s office. The manager was very polite, but he explained that someone 48 exactly the same name had presented them with a worthless check not long ago. My friend got very angry at it and said he would buy a necklace 49 . When he got up to go, the manager told him that the police would arrive at any moment and he had better stay 50 he wanted to get into serious trouble. Sure enough the police arrived, __51 to my friend for the 52 , but explained that a person who had used the same name as his 53 for a number of recent robberies. Then the police asked my friend to 54 out a note which had been used by the thief in a number of shops. The note read, “I have a gun in my pocket, ask no questions and give all the money in the safe.” Fortunately, my friend’s handwriting was quite__55__ the thief’s. He was not only allowed to go without further delay, but to take the pearl necklace with him.
1.A. change B. exchange C. trade D. business
2.A. Because B. If C. Though D. Since
3.A. favourite B. popular C. profitable D. convenient
4.A. dangerous B. priceless C. unimportant D. valueless
5.A. chance B. risk C. opportunity D. danger
6.A. within B. out of C. without D. beyond
7.A. refuses B. agrees C. fails D. hates
8.A. unhappy B. ashamed C. shocked D. puzzled
9.A. uninteresting B. unreasonable C. unforgettable D. unpleasant
10.A. amount B. accident C. stock D. number
11.A. in B. by C. with D. on
12.A. in need B. in common C. in use D. in order
13.A. used B. with C. named D. by
14.A. anywhere B. somewhere C. somewhere else D. everywhere
15.A. unless B. otherwise C. if D. whether
16.A. coming B. sticking C. apologizing D. checking
17.A. manner B. behavior C. inconvenience D. treatment
18.A. responsible B. answered C. charged D. blamed
19.A. copy B. read C. take D. bring
20.A. unlike B. different C. dissimilar D. dislike
----Mr. Johnson, would you have some more ice-cream?
----No, thanks. It’s very good, but I have to _____ my weight, you know.
A．remain B．notice C．watch D．care
