Some people ski down mountains. Others climb huge rocks or photograph dangerous animals. Why do people enjoy risky activities like these?
Some people take risks simply because it makes them feel good. Psychologist(心理学家)Marvin says that this kind of explorer(探险者)is always looking for change and excitement. When people do something new or risky, a chemical in the brain creates a pleasant feeling. They love this feeling and want to experience it as often as possible.
Other people don't take risks for the feeling of excitement but to achieve a goal. For example, Mike Fay went on a dangerous 2, 000-mile special journey in central Africa. He worked to help save the wildlife there. Fay's expeditions helped create 13 national parks.
For other people, such as extreme athletes(极限运动员)，taking risks is part of their job. Sports psychologist Shane says extreme athletes see the world differently. In a dangerous activity, most people probably do not feel in control. Extreme athletes are different: they feel in control in dangerous situations. The danger can even help them. For example, skier Daron Rahlves says that being afraid makes him try harder to succeed.
Most of us are not extreme athletes or explorers. However, we still take risks in our lives. Some of us take social risks, such as speaking in front of a large group of people. Sometimes, we take financial risks, such as buying a house. And sometimes we take career risks, such as leaving a job or starting a business. Most people take risks in some areas of life, but not in others. What kind of risk-taker are you?
1. What does the underlined word "it" in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．The brain. | B．Something new. |
| C．A chemical. | D．A pleasant feeling. |
| A．Much money. | B．A journey with a special goal. |
| C．A great idea. | D．A plan for a dangerous journey. |
| A．Three. | B．Four. | C．Five. | D．Six. |
| A．Mike Fay is a professional risk-taker. |
| B．Most people don't take risks in their daily life. |
| C．Extreme athletes deal with danger better than others. |
| D．Daron Rahlves takes risks mainly for change and excitement. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】As is known to us all, the stories we share with one another are significant, which shows our wisdom, providing our inspiration and attaching importance to our development. But occasionally people choose not to tell.
Consider the negative effects of not sharing a story in the news: People are wondering if public health officials are holding back too much information about the recent outbreak of Ebola.
There is a danger in holding back stories that ought to be told. Bobette Buster said it was like this, “The fact is, history has shown us that stories not told can become like a dangerous genie (妖怪) left in a bottle. When they are finally uncorked, their power to destroy is set free.”
There are a number of reasons why we hide parts of our story: they often show our weaknesses or expose our disadvantages; they require courage and strength to share, and of course, there are some stories that should be kept secret—especially those that embarrass someone else.
Most of us have two selves: the one we display on the outside and the one we actually are on the inside. And the better we get at hiding the stories that show our true selves, the more damage we may be causing to ourselves and to others.
Honesty and openness is important. It proves we are trustworthy. It displays we are human. We are not perfect or better. It highlights the importance of hard work and personal development. Hard work may not allow us to overcome our disadvantages completely. But with hard work, we do not have to be restricted to our mistakes.
Does this mean we admit every weakness, every disadvantage, and every secret regret to everybody we meet? No, of course not. There is a time and a place and a certain level of relationship necessary for some stories to be told in an appropriate manner.
1. What’s the function of the example in Paragraph 2?| A．It reflects that people are concerned about the spread of Ebola. |
| B．It concludes that one should share a story at a proper time. |
| C．It shows the bad effect caused by sharing a story. |
| D．It proves not sharing a story can cause trouble. |
| A．Broken. | B．Unfolded. | C．Untouched. | D．Freed. |
| A．People sometimes have no courage to share their stories. |
| B．Story-sharing highlights the importance of hard work. |
| C．People are used to exposing their weaknesses. |
| D．Some stories make people feel sad. |
| A．share stories appropriately for the good of others and ourselves |
| B．realize the importance of being honest when making friends |
| C．remove the dangers that can be caused by untold stories |
| D．be open to people close to you by sharing some secrets |
【推荐2】Think back to when you were in a classroom, and the teacher set a difficult problem. Which of the two following answers is closer to the way you reacted?
A: Oh no, this is too hard for me. I’m not even going to seriously try.
B: Ah, this is quite difficult but I like to push myself. Even if I don’t get the answer right, maybe I’ll learn something in the attempt.
The psychologist Carol Dweck of Stanford University gave a group of children problems that were slightly too hard. One group reacted positively, said they loved challenge and understood that their abilities could be developed. She says they had a “growth mindset”. But another group felt that their intelligence was being judged and they had failed. They had a “fixed mindset” and were unable to imagine improving.
Professor Dweck believes that, for years, children have been praised for their intelligence or talent, but this makes them sensitive to failure. They want to please by getting high grades, without interest in learning. The solution is to praise the process that children are engaged in: making an effort, using learning methods and improving. This way they will become better and achieve more.
Psychologists have been testing these theories. Students were taught that if they left their comfort zone and learned something new and difficult, they will be more intelligent. These students made faster progress than a control group. In another study, unsuccessful school children were using growth mindset techniques for a year. The results were astonishing. They came top in a regional test, beating children from much more advanced background. These children had previously felt that making an effort was a sign of being stupid, but they came to see it as the key to learning.
So, back to our original question. If you answered B, well done — you already have a growth mindset. If A, don’t worry; everyone is capable of becoming better with a little effort and self-awareness.
1. What makes the students with fixed mindset fail?| A．Lacking imagination. | B．Negative attitudes. |
| C．Poor judgment. | D．Low intelligence. |
| A．Making an effort. | B．The regional test. |
| C．The background. | D．The comfort zone. |
| A．To give an example. | B．To teach how to react. |
| C．To draw a conclusion. | D．To introduce the topic. |
| A．Talent. | B．High grades. | C．Hard-working. | D．Achievement. |
Tests on healthy volunteers found that they were more likely to feel a sense of fear at the moment when their hearts are contracting(收缩) and pumping blood around their bodies, compared with the point when the heartbeat is relaxed. Scientists say the results suggest that the heart is able to influence how the brain responds to a fearful event, depending on which point it is at in its regular cycle of contraction and relaxation.
Sarah Garfinkel at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School said: “Our Study shows for the first time that the way in which we deal with fear is different depending on when we see fearful pictures in relation to our heart.”
The study tested 20 healthy volunteers on their reactions to fear as they were shown pictures of fearful faces. Dr Garfinkel said, “The study showed that fearful faces are better noticed when the heart is pumping than when it is relaxed. Thus our hearts can also affect what we see and what we don’t see一and guide whether we see fear.”
To further understand this relationship, the scientists also used a brain scanner(扫描仪) to show how the brain influences the way the heart changes a person’s feeling of fear.
“We have found an important mechanism by which the heart and brain ‘speak’ to each other to change our feelings and reduce fear,” Dr Garfinkel said.
“We hope that by increasing our understanding about how fear is dealt with and ways that it could be reduced, we may be able to develop more successful treatments for anxiety disorders, and also for those who may be suffering from serious stress disorder.”
1. What is the finding of the study?
| A．One’s heart affects how he feels fear. |
| B．Fear is a result of one’s relaxed heartbeat. |
| C．Fear has something to do with one’s health. |
| D．One’s fast heartbeats are likely to cause fear. |
| A．volunteers’ heartbeats when they saw terrible pictures |
| B．the time volunteers saw fearful pictures and their health conditions |
| C．volunteers’ reactions to horrible pictures and data from their brain scans |
| D．different pictures shown to volunteers and their heart—brain communication |
| A．Order. | B．System. |
| C．Machine. | D．Treatment. |
| A．treating anxiety and stress better. |
| B．explaining the cycle of fear and anxiety |
| C．finding the key to the heart-brain communication |
| D．understanding different fears in our hearts and heads |
【推荐1】Smile! It makes everyone in the room feel better because they, consciously or unconsciously, are smiling with you. Growing evidence shows that an instinct for facial mimicry (模仿) allows us to experience other people’s feelings. If we can’t mirror another person’s face, it limits our ability to read and properly react to their expressions. A review of this emotional mirroring appears on February 11 in Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
In their paper, Paula Niedenthal and Adrienne Wood, social psychologists at the University of Wisconsin, describe how people in social situations copy others’ facial expressions to create emotional responses in themselves. For example, if you’re with a friend who looks sad, you might “try on” that sad face yourself without realizing you’re doing so. In “trying on” your friend’s expression, it helps you to recognize what they’re feeling by connecting it with times in the past when you made that expression. Humans get this emotional meaning from facial expressions in a matter of only a few hundred milliseconds.
“You reflect on your emotional feelings and then you produce some sort of recognition judgment, and the most important thing that results in is that you take the appropriate action—you approach the person or you avoid the person,” Niedenthal says. “Your own emotional reaction to the face changes your understanding of how you see the face in such a way that provides you with more information about what it means.”
A person’s ability to recognize and “share” others’ emotions can be prevented when they can’t mimic faces. This is a common complaint for people with motor diseases, like facial paralysis (瘫痪) from a stroke, or even due to nerve damage from plastic surgery. Niedenthal notes that the same would not be true for people who suffer from birth, because if you’ve never had the ability to mimic facial expressions, you will have developed another ways of interpreting emotions. Niedenthal next wants to explore what part in the brain is functioning to help with facial expression recognition. A better understanding of that part, she says, will give us a better idea of how to treat related disorders.
1. According to the passage, facial mimicry helps ________.| A．convey one’s own feelings clearly | B．change others’ emotions quickly |
| C．respond to others’ expressions properly | D．develop friendship with others easily |
| A．Paragraph 1 and 2. | B．Paragraph 2 and 3. |
| C．Paragraph 3 and 4. | D．Paragraph 2, 3 and 4. |
| A．When is the best time to treat brain disorders. |
| B．How many kinds of facial expressions people have. |
| C．How our brain helps us with emotional mirroring. |
| D．What part in the brain helps recognize facial expressions. |
| A．To discuss why people like smiling toothers. |
| B．To draw people’s attention to those with motor diseases. |
| C．To introduce a new trend in facial expression recognition. |
| D．To explain how people mirror others’ facial expressions. |
【推荐2】Malaysia has long wished to join the ranks of developed countries. Admission to the OECD, often referred to as the "rich countries' club", would be a formal recognition. But how close is Malaysia to the OECD level of development？
Judging from its economic development, the answer is "close". In 2019, Malaysia's per﹣capita GDP was estimated at about 12,200,notfarbehindthe13,530 average of the six least wealthy OECD members, according to World Bank data. Per﹣capita GDP is a very narrow gauge of development, though. Another good measure is the human development index, or HDI, which takes into account life expectancy, health, quality of life and education. In 2019, Malaysia's HDI put it 61st of 189 countries. Within Asia, only three countries rank higher: Singapore at 9th, Japan at 19th and Korea at 22nd. So Malaysia has made good progress.
However, the service sector provides a more comprehensive assessment. The service sector, as opposed to agriculture or manufacturing, tends to be the largest and most important in any developed economy. Here you find the best﹣paid, most highly skilled jobs. Services reflect the quality of a country's workers. And since a large part of the service sector is linked to consumers, it also measures consumer-sector development. An innovative, sophisticated service sector with a strong supply of skilled labor and steady demand from its customers is a meaningful measure of a country's development.
So how is Malaysia's services sector? On the supply side, Malaysia boasts one of the best﹣educated populations in emerging Asia. However, educational quality is far from satisfactory. According to the OECD's latest Program for International Student Assessment(PISA), Malaysian students of equivalent education levels perform only about 85% as well as their OECD peers in reading, 88% in math and 84% in science. It's better on the demand side, where private consumption has survived slowing global trade and rising economic uncertainty. In the first half of 2019, private consumption grew by 7.7% year on year-not far off 2018's 8% growth-despite falling investment and slowing export growth.
To go forward, Malaysia needs to make labor productivity and growth in consumption mutually reinforcing. To boost labor productivity, it needs to improve both the quality of workers and their market mobility. A more productive labor force will translate into higher household incomes, which will further stimulate private consumption. More consumption will encourage greater investment in services. And stronger investment, especially in startups, will make services a more powerful engine of employment growth.
Increasing investment in services would come with a bonus: quickening the evolution of Malaysia's digital economy. This is the new frontier(前线) for Malaysia's service sector. Getting there will prepare Malaysia for the prime time.
1. The underlined word "gauge" in Paragraph 2 is the closest in meaning to .| A．the distance between two places |
| B．an instrument for finding the size, quantity, etc. of something |
| C．a fact or event that can be used to judge something |
| D．something missing that prevents it from being complete or satisfactory |
| A．it shows how well labor force and consumer﹣sector develop |
| B．developed countries depend entirely on services to prosper |
| C．it includes jobs that require both basic and advanced skills |
| D．growth in agriculture and manufacturing underlines the service sector |
| A．According to PISA, Malaysian students score higher in reading than science. |
| B．Higher family incomes will help to increase labor productivity. |
| C．Slower global economy didn't affect Malaysia's private consumption that much. |
| D．Investment in services is likely to create more job opportunities. |
| A．The Definition and Role of a Developed Country |
| B．Developing Economy Is the Key to Joining OECD |
| C．Malaysia Has to Further Develop Its Services |
| D．People in Malaysia Need Better Education |
【推荐3】You want to have fun and adventure and so you decide to travel somewhere to do it. Sounds like a simple enough thing. And basically it is. But what is adventure? That is the key here and the answer can be different for different people.
For those who love sports, adventure travel can have a whole different meaning than for those who like history. The physical travel types that you can find include such adventure travel as white water rafting (白浪漂流), kayaking(皮艇运动) or climbing and hiking to some mountains somewhere. To the hiker, backpacking across Ireland might be their adventure. For this type of person, adventure travel almost always includes something physical. Often the goal is to push their body’s limits and test their individual endurance (耐力).
For those who less want to climb mountains, adventure travel might mean traveling to Nepal and taking in the local festivals. Wine tasting in Italy is also vacation adventure for the more relaxed travelers who enjoy peace and comfort. Anything that is opposite to the normal scope (范围) of the travelers’ lifestyle defines (定义) adventure.
Adventure travel is not necessarily a one-size-fits-all type of vacation. Adventure depends on the person’s physical limits, how much money the person has and what the person enjoys doing. Going beyond the normal is adventurous for many. If your life is quite busy, then sitting on a beach in the moonlight with your family might be adventure for you. The point is not what you do but that you have a good time and that it is an adventure for YOU — not for the person next to you.
Do not sit home this year when vacation time rolls around. Go beyond your normal routine(常规) and try something new. If you usually spend your vacation sun-bathing on a beach, try hiking, instead, through the mountains. Look around you, think beyond your comfort zone and head out on an adventure vacation.
1. Which of the following is a quiet traveler most likely to choose?| A．Backpacking across a country. |
| B．Wine tasting in a bar. |
| C．Hiking to some mountains. |
| D．White water rafting. |
| A．Whether you enjoy yourself. |
| B．Whether you try something dangerous. |
| C．Where you go for the traveling. |
| D．What you do in the traveling. |
| A．according to | B．later than |
| C．more than | D．less than |
| A．Tips on Adventure Travel |
| B．Who Is Interested in Adventure Travel |
| C．What Is Adventure Travel |
| D．Popular Places for Adventure Travel |
