A.
Talkingon the phone while driving isn't the only situation where we're worse atmultitasking than we might like to think we are. New studies have identified abottleneck in our brains that some say means we are fundamentally incapable oftrue multitasking. If experimental findings reflect real-world performance,people who think they are multitasking, are probably just under performing inall- or at best, all but one - of their parall pursuits. Practice might improveyour performance, but you will never be as good as when focusing on one task ata time.
B.
Theproblem, according to Rene Marois, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University inNashville, Tennessee, is that there's a sticking point in the brain. Todemonstrate this, Marois devised an experiment to locate it Volunteers watch ascreen and when a particular image appears, a red circle, say, they have topress a key with their index finger. Different coloured circles require pressesfrom different fingers. Typical response time is about half a second, and thevolunteers quickly reached their peak performance. Then they learn to listen todifferent recordings and respond by making a specific sound. For instance, whenthey hear a bird chirp, they have to say "ba"; an electronic soundshould elicit a "ko", and so on. Again，no problem. A normal person cando that in about half a second, with almost no effort.
C.
Thetrouble comes when Marois shows the volunteers an image, and then almostimmediately plays them a sound. Now they'e flummoxed." If you show an imageand play a sound at the same time, one task is postponed," he says. Infact, if the second task is introduced within the half. second or so it takesto process and react to the first, it will simply be delayed until the firstone is done. The largest dual task delays occur when the two tasks arepresented simultaneously; delays progressively shorten as the interval betweenpresenting the tasks lengthens.
D.
Thereare at least three points where we seem to get stuck, says Marois. The first isin simply identifying what we're looking at. This can take a few tenths of asecond, during which time we are not able to see andrecognize the second item. This limitation is known as the "attentionalblink*: experiments have shown that if you're watching out for a particularevent and a second one shows up unexpectedly any time within this crucialwindow of concentration, it may register in your visual cortex but you will beunable to act upon it. Interestingly, if you don't expect the first event, youhave no trouble responding to the second. What exactly causes the attentionalblink is still a matter for debate.
E.
A secondlimitation is in our short-term visual memory. It's estimated that we can keeptrack of about four items at a time, fewer if they are complex. This capacityshortage is thought to explain, in part, our astonishing inability to detecteven huge changes in scenes that are otherwise identical, so-called"change blindness". Show people pairs of near-identical photos - say,aircraft engines in one picture have disappeared in the other - and they willfail to spot the differences. Here again, though, there is disagreement aboutwhat the essential limiting factor really is. Does it come down to a dearth ofstorage capacity, or is it about how much attention a viewer is paying?
F.
A thirdlimitation is that choosing a response to a stimulus - braking when you see achild in the road, for instance, or replying when your mother tells you overthe phone that she' s thinking of leaving your dad - also takes brainpower.Selecting a response to one of these things will delay by some tenths of asecond your ability to respond to the other. This is called the "responseselection bottleneck theory, first proposed in 1952.
G.
ButDavid Meyer, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, don't buythe bottleneck idea. He thinks dual-task interference is just evidence of astrategy used by the brain to prioritise multiple activities. Meyer is known assomething of an optimist by his peers. He has written papers with titles like"Virtually perfect time- sharing in dual-task performance: Uncorking thecentral cognitive bottleneck. His experiments have shown that with enoughpractice - at least 2000 tries - some people can execute two tasks simultaneouslyas competently as if they were doing them one after the other. He suggests thatthere is a central cognitive processor that coordinates all this and, what'smore, he thinks it uses discretion sometimes it chooses to delay one task whilecompleting another.
H.
Maroisagrees that practice can sometimes erase interference effects. He has foundthat with just 1 hour of practice each day for two weeks, volunteers show ahuge improvement at managing both his tasks at once. Where he disagrees withMeyer is in what the brain is doing to achieve this. Marois speculates thatpractice might give us the chance to find less congested circuits to execute atask - rather like finding trusty back streets to avoid heavy traffic on mainroads - effectively making our response to the task subconscious. After all,there are plenty of examples of subconscious multitasking that most of usroutinely manage: walking and talking, eating and reading, watching TV andfolding the laundry.
I.
Itprobably comes as no surprise that, generally speaking, we get worse atmultitasking as we age. According to Art Kramer at the University of llinois atUrbana- Champaign, who studies how ageing affects our cognitive abilities, wespeak in our 20s. Though the decline precipitous. In one study, he and hiscolleagues had both young and old participants do a simulated driving taskwhile carrying on a conversation. He found that while young drivers tended tomiss background changes, older drivers failed to notice things that were highly
14-18为匹配题
14. A theory explained delay happens whenselecting one reaction F
15. Different age group responds toimportant things differently I
16. Conflicts happened when visual and audioelement emerge simultaneously C
17. An experiment designed to demonstratesthe critical part of the brain for multitasking B
18. A viewpoint favours the optimistic sideof multitasking performance G
19-21为选择题
19. Which one is correct about theexperiment conducted by Rene Marois?
A participants performed poorly on thelistening task solely
B. volunteers press a different key ondifferent colour
C. participants need to use differentfingers on the different coloured object
D. they did a better job on Mixed image andsound information
20. Which statement is correct about thefirst limitation of Marois's experiment?
A. attentional blink" takes about tenseconds
B. lag occurs if we concentrate on oneobject while the second one appears
C. we always have trouble in reaching thesecond one
D. the first limitation can be avoided bycertain measure
21. Which one is NOT correct about Meyer'sexperiments and statements?
A. just after failure in several attemptscan people execute dual-task
B. Practice can overcome dual-taskinterference
C. Meyer holds a diferent opinion onMarois's theory
D. an existing processor decides whether todelay another task or not
22-26为判断题
22. The longer gap between the twopresenting tasks means a shorter delay toward the second one.YES
23. Incapable human memory cause people tosometimes miss the differences when presented with two similar images. YES
24. Marois has a different opinion on theclaim that training removes the bottleneck effect. NO
25. Art Kramer proved there is a correlationbetween multitasking performance and genders. NOT GIVEN
26. The author doesn't believe that theeffect of practice could bring any variation NO
Passage 3：中世纪英国小孩玩耍TheConcept of Childhood in Western Countries
原文：
Thehistory of childhood has been a heated topic in social history since the highlyinfluen-tial book ‘Centuries of Childhood’, written by French historianPhilippe Aries, emerged in 1960. He claimed that ‘childhood’ is a conceptcreated by modern society.
A
Whetherchildhood is itself a recent invention has been one of the most intenselydebated issues in the history of childhood. Historian Philippe Aries assertedthat children were regarded as miniature adults, with all the intellect andpersonality that this implies, in Western Europe during the Middle Ages (up toabout the end of the 15th century). After scrutinising medieval pictures anddiaries, he concluded that there was no distinction between children and adultsfor they shared similar leisure activities and work. However, this does notmean children were neglected, forsaken or despised, he argued. The idea ofchildhood corresponds to awareness about the peculiar nature of childhood,which distin-guishes the child from adult, even the young adult. Therefore, theconcept of childhood is not to be confused with affection for children.
B
Traditionally,children played a functional role in contributing to the family income in thehistory. Under this circumstance, children were considered to be useful. Back inthe Middle Ages, children of 5 or 6 years old did necessary chores for theirparents. During the 16th century, children of 9 or 10 years old were oftenencouraged or even forced to leave their family to work as servants forwealthier families or apprentices for a trade.
C
In the18th and 19th centuries, industrialisation created a new demand for childlabour; thus many children were forced to work for a long time in mines,workshops and factories. The issue of whether long hours of labouring wouldinterfere with children’s growing bodies began to perplex social reformers.Some of them started to realise the potential of system-atic studies to monitorhow far these early deprivations might be influencing children’s development.
D
Theconcerns of reformers gradually had some impact upon the working condition ofchil-dren. For example, in Britain, the Factory Act of 1833 signified theemergence of legal protection of children from exploitation and was alsoassociated with the rise of schools for factory children. Due partly to factoryreform, the worst forms of child exploitation were eliminated gradually. Theinfluence of trade unions and economic changes also contributed to theevolution by leaving some forms of child labour redundant during the 19th century.Initiating children into work as ‘useful’ children was no longer a priority,and childhood was deemed to be a time for play and education for all childreninstead of a privileged minority. Childhood was increasingly understood as amore extended phase of dependency, devel-opment and learning with the delay ofthe age for starting full-time work. Even so, work continued to play asignificant, if less essential, role in children’s lives in the later 19th and20th centuries. Finally, the ‘useful child’ has become a controversial conceptduring the first decade of the 21st century, especially in the context ofglobal concern about large numbers of children engaged in child labour.
E
Thehalf-time schools established upon the Factory Act of 1833 allowed children towork and attend school. However, a significant proportion of children neverattended school in the 1840s, and even if they did, they dropped out by the ageof 10 or 11. By the end of the 19th century in Britain, the situation changeddramatically, and schools became the core to the concept of a ‘normal’childhood.
F
It is nolonger a privilege for children to attend school and all children are expectedto spend a significant part of their day in a classroom. Once in school,children’s lives could be separated from domestic life and the adult world ofwork. In this way, school turns into an institution dedicated to shaping theminds, behaviour and morals of the young. Besides, education dominated themanagement of children’s waking hours through the hours spent in the classroom,homework (the growth of ‘after school’ activities), and the importance attachedto parental involvement.
G
Industrialisation,urbanisation and mass schooling pose new challenges for those who areresponsible for protecting children’s welfare, as well as promoting theirlearning. An increasing number of children are being treated as a group withunique needs, and are organised into groups in the light of their age. Forinstance, teachers need to know some information about what to expect ofchildren in their classrooms, what kinds of instruction are appropriate fordifferent age groups, and what is the best way to assess children’s prog-ress.Also, they want tools enabling them to sort and select children according totheir abili-ties and potential.
Questions1 - 7
Do thefollowing statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes1-7 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE ifthe statement agrees with the information
FALSE ifthe statement contradicts the information
NOTGIVEN if there is no information on this
1.Ariespointed out that children did certain kinds of work different from adultsduring the Middle Ages.
TRUEFALSENOTGIVEN
2.Workingchildren during the Middle Ages were generally unloved.
3.Somescientists thought that overwork might damage the health of young children.
4.Therise of trade unions majorly contributed to the protection of children fromexploitation in the 19th century.
5.By theaid of half-time schools, most children went to school in the mid-19th century.
6.In the20th century, almost all children needed to go to school with a full-timeschedule.
7.Nowadays,children’s needs are much differentiated and categorised based on how old they are.
Questions8 - 13
Answerthe questions below.
Choose NOMORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Writeyour answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.
8 Whathas not become a hot topic until the French historian Philippe Aries’ bookcaused great attention?
9 Whatimage did Aries believe children are supposed to be like in Western Europeduring the Middle Ages?
10 Whathistorical event generated the need for a large number of children to work fora long time in the 18th and 19th centuries?
11 Whatbill was enacted to protect children from exploitation in Britain in the 1800s?
12 Whatactivities were more and more regarded as preferable to almost all chil-dren inthe 19th century?
13 Inwhat place did children spend the majority of time during their day in school?
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