Question

When we know somewhere well，we say we “know it like the back of our hand”. But new research has shown that we don’t actually know as much about our hands as we think we do.

Wider and shorter

Professor Matthew Longo at the University of London and his team did an experiment, covering the left hands of 100 people. Then they asked the people to point to where they thought their fingertips and knuckles (指关节) were. They made some quite big mistakes.

“People think their hand is wider than it actually is,” said Longo. The fingers also seem shorter than they are. This mistake gets worse as you go across the hand from the thumb to the little finger.

Sense of position

“It is connected to our sense of position,” explained Longo. This is our ability to tell where different parts of our bodies are, even when we can’t see them. “It tells us whether a joint is straight, or not” he said. It also tells us whether we are going up or down in an elevator. All this information comes from signs from nerves in real time. It’s like our brain has maps — maps that show the size and shape of our body. “This experiment tried to find those maps,” said Longo.

Strength(强度) of feeling

But these maps make mistakes. These mistakes may be made because of how the brain understands different parts of the skin. “Our brains ‘see’ areas as larger where the skin feels touch strongly,” said Longo. Body parts don’t appear as their true size, but appear bigger or smaller depending on how strongly they feel touch. Our lips, for example, have more nerves than our nose. So brain “sees” lips on its map of the body as being bigger than our nose. The same thing happens for other parts of the body that have lots of nerves.

Longo believes that more research in this area may help us to understand eating problem better, because people suffering from these problems may not know their bodies properly.

1.Which of following statement is TRUE about the experiment according to the article?

A. People think their body parts are larger than they actually are.

B. People made more mistakes about their little fingers length than their thumbs’ length.

C. People’s fingers are actually shorter than they think.

D. People were asked to draw their hands from memory

2.What does the underlined “it” in Paragraph 4 refer to?

A. The new experiment.    B. The location information.

C. The mistake people made.    D. The sizes of fingers and hands.

3.We can learn from the article that ________.

A. the maps of people’s bodies form before they are born

B. the maps of our body are based on information from nerves

C. our sense of position tells how different parts of the body work

D. how we feel about our body shape is only decided by our sense of position

4.We can infer from the article that ________.

A. the hand feels touch more strongly than fingers do

B. our lips have a weaker sense of touch than our nose

C. there are more nerves in the finger than in the hand

D. our sense of position should not be trusted because it is too often incorrect

Answer

1.B

2.C

3.B

4.A

【解析】本文通过实验研究发现，人们并不了解自己的手，大脑所感受到的事物往往与身体部位神经的多少有关，因而会有一些错觉。

1.推理判断题。根据第三段People think their hand is wider than it actually is,” said Longo. The fingers also seem shorter than they are. This mistake gets worse as you go across the hand from the thumb to the little finger. 可知，从大拇指数到小拇指，人们对于小拇指的长度估计错误远远大于第一个大拇指的长度估计，故选B。

2.词义猜测题。此处代词it具有承上启下的作用，指代的是上文中出现的人们所犯的错误，故答案为C。

3.推理判断题。根据倒数第二段的描述Our lips, for example, have more nerves than our nose. So brain “sees” lips on its map of the body as being bigger than our nose. The same thing happens for other parts of the body that have lots of nerves.可知，我们的位置观念告诉身体的不同部位如何工作，比如，我们嘴唇上的神经比鼻子里的多，所以大脑就觉得嘴唇要比鼻子大得多，同样的事情也发生在有大量神经的身体其他部位上。故选B。

4.推理判断题。根据倒数第二段“Our brains ‘see” areas as larger where the skin feels touch strongly,”可知，皮肤触感强烈的地方大脑看到就大，而手的神经要远远多于手指，故答案为A。

【名师点睛】

推理判断题要求在理解原文表面文字信息的基础上，做出一定的推理判断，从而得到文章的隐含意义和深层意义。推理判断题所涉及的内容可能是文中的某一句话，也可能是某几句话，所以，推理题的答案只能是根据原文表面文字信息进一步推出的答案：即对原文某一句话或某几句话所作的同义改写或综合。推理判断题的题干中通常含有infer, suggest, imply, conclude, indicate等标志性词语。这种题型主要包括细节判断题、态度观点推断题、写作意图推断题、文章出处判断题和猜测想象推断题。比如本文第3题、第4题的题干3. We can learn from the article that_____________.4. We can infer from the article that .这都属于推理判断题。那么对于第三题，首先要找到文章中的信息句：根据倒数第二段的描述，Our lips, for example, have more nerves than our nose. So brain “sees” lips on its map of the body as being bigger than our nose. The same thing happens for other parts of the body that have lots of nerves.可知，我们嘴唇上的神经比鼻子里的多，所以大脑就觉得嘴唇要比鼻子大得多，同样的事情也发生在有大量神经的身体其他部位上。也就是我们关于身体器官的位置观念告诉了我们身体的不同器官是如何工作的，神经多的器官在大脑的印象中就比较大，故选B。