文章大意:本文是一篇说明文。文章主要介绍了研究表明,通过使用数字设备提醒,人们可以更好地记住重要事项,并且甚至可以提高对未保存信息的记忆。然而,文章也指出,过度依赖提醒可能导致遗忘,因此需要谨慎使用。
Here’s an all-too-familiar situation: You excitedly packed for your beach trip. Luckily, you remembered all the necessities: socks, underwear, a phone charger and your passport, etc. But upon arrival, you realized you forgot to bring your toothbrush. In a new study, researchers suggest offloading important to-do items — for example, by setting reminders on your phone — could clear brain space to better remember the little things, like your toothbrush.
To prove this, the researchers developed a memory task to be played on a touch screen computer. The test was undertaken by 158 volunteers aged between 18 and 71. They were shown 12 numbered circles on the screen, and had to remember to drag some of these to the left and some to the right. The number of circles that they remembered to drag to the correct side decided their rewards at the end of the experiment. One side was “high value’, meaning that remembering to drag a circle to this side was worth 10 times as much money as remembering to drag a circle to the other “low value” side.
Volunteers performed this task 16 times. They had to use their own memory to remember at half of the trials and they were allowed to set reminders on the external digital devices for the other half.
The researchers found volunteers tended to use the digital devices to store details of the high-value circles. And, when they did so, their memory for those circles was improved by 18%. “What was unexpected was that their memory for low-value circles was also improved by 27%, even in those who had never set any reminders for low-value circles,” said Sam Gilbect.
However, results also showed a potential cost to using reminders. When reminders were taken away, the volunteers remembered the low-value circles better than the high-value ones. “Far from causing digital dementia (痴呆), using a memory device can even improve our memory for information that we never saved. But we need to be careful that we back up the most important information. Otherwise, if a memory tool fails, we could be left with nothing but less important information in our own memory,” Gilbert said.
8. The situation in paragraph 1 is described to show that ______.
A.our memory is incorrect sometimes |
B.our memory has a certain preference |
C.our memory has an order of importance |
D.our memory is likely to weaken over time |
9. What can we learn about the experiment?
A.Volunteers’ performance was connected with their ages. |
B.Volunteers tended to set reminders for low-value circles. |
C.Volunteers were not allowed to use devices in the experiment. |
D.Dragging high-value circles to the correct side would win more awards. |
10. What surprised the researchers?
A.Digital devices did harm to the brain when used improperly. |
B.Volunteers tended to remember low-value information better. |
C.Volunteers’ memory for low-value content was improved too. |
D.Volunteers tended to use digital devices for high-value information. |
11. What can be a suitable title for the text?
A.We rely too much on to-do lists |
B.Digital reminders are replacing human memory |
C.Overuse of technology leads to digital dementia |
D.Using digital reminders helps improve our memory |