Many people believe that teaching children music makes them smarter, better able to learn new things. Researchers, however, have found that there’s one thing musical training does not do. They say it does not make children more intelligent.
Samuel Mehr is a graduate student at Harvard’s School of Education. He said it is wrong to think that learning to play a musical instrument improves a child’s intellectual development. He says the evidence comes from studies that measured the mental ability of two groups of 4-year-olds and their parents. One group attended music class, the other went to a class that places importance on the visual arts — arts that can be seen. “The evidence there is ‘no.’ We found no evidence for any advantage on any of these tests for the kids taking part in these music classes,” said Mehr.
Samuel Mehr says researchers have carried out many studies in an effort to learn whether musical training can make children smarter. He says the results have been mixed. He says only one study seems to show a small percentage increase in IQ, intellectual scores among students after one year of music lessons. He does not believe that IQ is a good measure of a child’s intelligence. He says researchers in his study compared how well children in the musical training group did on mental processing tasks or projects, then the results were compared to those of children who did not take lessons. There was no evidence that the musical training group did much better on the mental tasks than the other group. The researchers confirmed the results with a larger group of children and their parents.
Mr Mehr says music lessons may not offer children a fast easy way to gain entry to the best schools later of their life. But he says the training is still important for cultural reasons. In his words, “We teach music because music is important for us.”
He notes that the works of writer William Shakespeare are not taught, so the children will do better in physics. He says Shakespeare is taught because it is important. “And I don’t think music needs to be any different than that.”
1. Different from the common belief, Samuel Mehr believes that ______.| A．playing musical instrument makes children more intelligent |
| B．musical training has no evident link to children’s intelligence |
| C．learning to play musical instrument is not worthwhile at all. |
| D．music lessons can increase children’s IQ and make them smarter |
| A．By attending music lessons himself. | B．By consulting experts. |
| C．By comparing different groups. | D．By talking to parents. |
| A．Music lessons probably help to gain better performance. |
| B．Musical training has no positive effect on children at all. |
| C．Music lessons have different influences on different people. |
| D．Musical training cannot possibly make children smarter. |
| A．To tell us music is taught because of its great importance. |
| B．To show us the importance of studying Shakespeare’s works. |
| C．To argue that music lessons cannot make children smarter |
| D．To make us realize Shakespeare is as important as music. |
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【推荐1】In this rapidly developing world, the radio is one of the most affected media platforms. People can now easily download music from the internet, or listen to it online.
Radio was known as a relief to pressure in the past. Therefore, George Oliver realized that radio should be brought back and compete with the existing music streaming platforms. Knowing that it was nearly impossible to live a life without the internet in this age, George decided to take the radio online. He founded Realmuzic. net on October 28, 2015.
Launching an online radio site and maintaining it wasn’t easy. To realize his dream of reviving (复兴) the radio culture, he faced many challenges, and turned a deaf ear to those against his idea. George and his DJs team, who were also motivated by the same dream, put in all their efforts to make this happen. Just like any other business, Realmuzic. net began with a hard start. Not many people knew about this online radio station and they didn’t want to go back to the radio music streaming service.
They decided to target the 80’s and 90’s kids and picked songs that played 24/7 on Realmuzic. net. They saw a great increase in their site-visits. Their perfect song selection brought back the good old times they spent listening lo the radio stations.
Their next step was to bridge the gap between Generation Z and radio. As they were born in the internet time, the radio seemed foreign to them. Challenges excited George, so he wanted to make radio appealing for Generation Z.
Today Realmuzic. net attracts 52 million music lovers across 120 countries. As radio had coped with technology, Realmuzic. net is here to stay and has a long way to go!
1. Why did George want to bring the radio back to life?| A．He had been a radio fan since his childhood. |
| B．He was worried about online music streaming. |
| C．He knew radio’s effect on reducing pressure. |
| D．He was inspired by the rise of radio audience. |
| A．They failed to get support from the government. |
| B．His online radio station wasn’t widely known. |
| C．Some of his team members ignored his ideas. |
| D．It was hard to pick songs suitable for all ages. |
| A．They’re not familiar with radio. | B．The internet is foreign to them. |
| C．They start their careers online. | D．They like to take up challenges. |
| A．Bridge the Gap the Internet Brings About | B．Celebrate Our Traditions by Going Online |
| C．Despite Challenges, Traditions Stay Active | D．Keep the Radio Alive Through Realmuzic. net |
【推荐2】You might not think that an AI capable of making music would stimulate your emotion, but others think differently, particularly those who gathered at Mexico City’s Symphony Hall in 2019 for Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, which I finished using melodies generated by an AI.
As the orchestra (管弦乐团) finished Schubert’s original work and began the music the AI and I had written, I could feel the crowd’s energy shift from astonishment to indignation and fear. They seemed afraid that an AI might be able to make emotional symphonic music. You can see their point: an AI that makes emotional music could affect the emotional lives of thousands or even millions of people in a small, but profound way, just like a human musician does.
Positive and negative, people reacted very strongly to AI’s symphonic debut (首秀). Even though most people don’t believe that AI can create something enjoyable, they, at least partly, did enjoy the Unfinished Symphony.
Enjoyment in music implies that there’s something in the music that the listener connects to, a perception of shared emotion. But, in the case of AI music, an emotion shared with who? AI, as of yet, has no emotions. So what is the meaning of music made without an emotional composer? The unsatisfying answer is that music has no objective meaning. A composer can decide how a piece of music sounds, but it’s the listener that decides what it means.
No matter how it’s created, music doesn’t exist in a vacuum (真空) to the listener. The meaning we assign to music depends on its context — how the piece connects to other elements in our lives. Without context, music is like the results of a game whose rules have been lost. The context for a music is part of who you are. The music is emotional to you because you have the context to appreciate it. As it continues to evolve, AI music will develop its own context. Certainly, it’ll be different from human-made music. It’ll mix existing genres to create new ones; it’ll combine instruments that we wouldn’t think of combining. Its rules will be different.
I’m now always asked the same question: “Who put the emotion in that music: you, the composer, or the AI?” But that’s not the question they really want to ask, though. There’s a deeper question that most people are too afraid to ask right now: “Are my emotions so simple that they can be maneuvered by a machine?”
In my experience, this could be possible one day. If a modestly capable music AI in 2019 could stir up emotions of an audience, maybe AI can have a more powerful effect on our emotional lives than we’d like to admit.
1. The audience reacted strongly to the symphony mainly due to ______.| A．their doubts about AI’s capabilities | B．their uneasiness about AI’s influence |
| C．the orchestra’s brilliant presentation of AI music | D．the likeness between AI music and the original work |
| A．AI poses little impact on people’s emotions. |
| B．Music bears no intended emotional meaning. |
| C．AI music will outperform human-made music. |
| D．The context reflects people’s interpretation of music. |
| A．Refreshed. | B．Challenged. | C．Revealed. | D．Directed. |
| A．Are Composers To Be Replaced? | B．Would AI Music Be a Rising Trend? |
| C．Could AI Make Music That Moves You? | D．Was the Unfinished Symphony Successful? |
【推荐3】People often call music a universal language, but do certain songs really cause the same mental images in our minds? Scientists at Princeton find that while music absolutely can stimulate(激发)similar mental experiences, the results also strongly suggest culture is a major factor.
A total of 622 people took part in the study. All of the volunteers came from one of three locations: two suburban college towns in the US (one in Arkansas and the other in Michigan), or the rural Chinese village of Dimen. It’s worth noting that the main language in Dimen is Dong, a tonal language unrelated to the official language of China. Locals there have little contact with Western media or culture at all. All participants listened to the exact same 32 “musical stimuli”— which were 60-second cuts of instrumental music. Half of these pieces came from Western music while the rest came from Chinese music.
After hearing, researchers asked the groups about the images they saw in their heads while listening. Incredibly, people from Arkansas and Michigan often described very similar stories, even using the exact same words frequently. Dimen listeners, on the other hand, envisioned stories that were similar to each other but quite different from the American listeners. More specifically, one track led t o Americans seeing a cowboy in the hot desert surveying an empty town. Meanwhile, Chinese participants imagined a man in ancient times reflecting on the loss of a loved one.
“There’s something about the results that’s really surprising, especially because people encounter music in 2022 often in a solitary way, over headphones. But it turns out, it’s still a shared experience, almost like a shred dream, although not universally shared, ”says Elizabeth Margulis, the study author.
The results paint a more complex picture of music’s power. Music can generate remarkably similar stories in listeners’ minds, but it depends on a common set of cultural experiences. So while we imagine music can bring people together, the opposite can also be true-it can distinguish between sets of people with a different background or culture.
1. What is the probable reason for Dimen being selected for the study?| A．Its unique cultural background. | B．Its close contact with US. |
| C．Its complex language system. | D．Its long tradition of music. |
| A．Exchange their comments on the scene. |
| B．Imagine musicians’ original inspiration. |
| C．Describe the picture forming in mind. |
| D．Recall personal music-related stories. |
| A．Strange. | B．Individual. | C．Outdated. | D．Polite. |
| A．Unbelievable? Music’s Effects Go beyond Cultures |
| B．Problem Solved! How Music Brings Us All Together |
| C．Amazing! Cultures Determine Our Preference for Music |
| D．Universal Language? Culture Matters When We Hear Music |
【推荐1】Human beings are not the only ones who communicate. Animals can also use body language to express themselves. Here is a quick look at how some of our animal friends send messages.
Dogs use sounds, body movements, and their tails to communicate. When a dog is happy, its ears will stand up and its eves will be wide open. The dog will start barking, moving its tail, and running around in circles or jumping up and down. A dog that is afraid will lay on its back and close its eves. The dog may also shake, and it will put its tail between its legs. When a dog is angry, it'll try to make itself look as big as possible, with its tail standing straight. Its main body language is showing its teeth and growling.
Elephants also use noises and body language. An elephant's sense of smell is highly developed. An elephant can smell how another elephant is feeling and even tell if it's sick. The elephant's nose, or trunk, is also used to make noises and to welcome other elephants. Different noises have varieties of meanings: they can mean "I'm hungry, or angry, good to see you!" If an elephant spreads its ears, it means "Watch out!" To show friendship, elephants will touch each other with their trunk and stand close to each other, putting their heads together.
Dolphins are social animals. They live in groups and love showing each other their feelings. An angry dolphin will sometimes hit its tail on the surface of the water. The movement and noise let other dolphins know that something is wrong. If a dolphin wants to send a message over a long distance, or if it wants to show how strong it is, it will jump high out of the water and land on its side, making a loud noise. When dolphins are tired and need to rest, they will swim in small groups close to the surface.
1. Which of the following can be the most suitable title of this passage?| A．The Relationship between Animals | B．Animal Body Language |
| C．Animal Feelings | D．Some Stories of Animals |
| A．angry. | B．happy. | C．afraid | D．sad. |
| A．An elephant can know that another elephant is feeling sick by smelling. |
| B．Elephants can use their trunks to make noises and to welcome other elephants. |
| C．Elephants can use their tails to warm other elephants of dangers. |
| D．Elephants' touching each other with their trunks is a sign of showing friendship. |
| A．No. | B．Yes. | C．It's hard to say. | D．This passage doesn't mention this point. |
【推荐2】Virtual reality isn’t just for video games anymore. The technology is changing industries that many people had never thought it would, such as dairy farming.
Russian dairy farmers gave cows VR goggles (眼镜) with hope that they would be happier and make better milk. A farm just outside of Moscow is testing VR glasses for its cows, it says, in an effort to increase the quantity and quality of the milk produced.
That’s according to a news release published Monday from the Ministry of Agriculture of the Moscow region. It came accompanied by photos of a cow trying out its fancy new goggles. The ministry explains it like this:Studies have shown that cows, environmental conditions can impact the milk produced, specifically improving its quality or increasing its quantity. So, a team of developers, with the help of vets and consultants for dairy production, made some oversized VR glasses for cows. They adapted the human versions to account for cows’ different head shapes and eyesight, the news release says. And then voila! Cow VR glasses. And what were these cows experiencing with their new VR glasses? A wild, expansive field beneath the summer sun. A cow’s (virtual) paradise (天堂).
So far, it’s unclear if the glasses have helped milk production-further study will be needed for that. But a first test did reveal a decrease in anxiety and an increase in the emotional mood of the herd, the release said. To be fair, if we were transported to a vast field in the summertime, our anxiety and emotional mood would be better, too. Russian dairy farmers aren’t the only ones going the extra mile to keep their cows happy and improve product, though. Some Wagyu farmers set mood lighting, among other tricks, to keep their cows calm and producing the best beef possible. Others play them music, which one Missouri farmer says leads to better milk.
1. Why were VR glasses used in the farm?| A．To avoid cows’ fighting. | B．To cure the cows’ diseases. |
| C．To test the cows’ eyesight. | D．To get more and better milk. |
| A．Exciting movies. | B．Video games. |
| C．A vast field in the sun. | D．More cows in the distance. |
| A．Playing beautiful music. | B．Telling animal stories. |
| C．Choosing better meal time. | D．Photos of many cows. |
| A．Nature. | B．Science. | C．Education. | D．Entertainment. |
【推荐3】What goes on in our brains when we decide to hit the share button, and what makes something go viral? Since the dawn of the Internet, businesses, media outlets and influencers alike have been trying to answer these questions. Now, researchers have come one step closer to cracking this mysterious model by shining a light on the neuroscience (神经科学) of viral content.
“Our study finds a way to obtain brain signals that would predict how much information gets shared.” said Emily Falk, professor of communication, psychology and marketing and Hang-Yee Chan, a lecturer of communication.
Their new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on October 23, investigated both the U. S. and the Netherlands using a broader range of news categories—including health and climate change.
“When we see greater activation of regions that track self-relevance (Is it important to me) and social-relevance (Is it important to people I know), the news articles are more likely to be shared widely,” Falk and Chan said. By studying these brain responses, the team managed to build a value-based model to accurately predict how widely the articles would be shared online. This link between brain activity and sharing was seen in both the American and Dutch participants, suggesting that this model is accurate across cultures.
“Seeing how people’s brains react inside the scanner gives us insight into why people ultimately share information nowadays,” Chan said. “If we understand these signals, we might be able to use that knowledge to help important news get shared and stop misinformation from going viral.” It is also helpful for content creators to maximize their reach. “Our current study demonstrates how tapping into the brain would help content creators optimize their messages’ influence,” Falk and Chan said. “We are interested in building on these results to develop ways to counter harmful information and false news, in addition to spreading high-quality content.” “A lot of our most pressing problems in society are influenced by the decisions people make, and the decisions we make are influenced by the news. What you share matters, and so understanding why you share it matters, too.”
1. What do researchers intend to do in their study?| A．To find a way to get brain signals. |
| B．To work out a mysterious model. |
| C．To use a broad range of news categories. |
| D．To predict how much information get shared. |
| A．The basis and process of the study. |
| B．The way to predict brain activation. |
| C．The pattern of a value-based model. |
| D．The reason why certain news is shared. |
| A．To solve most urgent problems. |
| B．To understand why viral news matter. |
| C．To influence the decisions people will make. |
| D．To better the efficiency of positive publicity. |
| A．How to Share a Viral News |
| B．How to Obtain Brain Signals |
| C．How Certain Studies Get Shared |
| D．How Brain Identifies Viral Content |
【推荐1】Brown bears have stopped eating salmon（鲑鱼）in favor of elderberries after being forced to make a choice due to climate change. Warming temperatures mean that the berries are ripening earlier than usual, at exactly the same time as the freshwater streams on Alaska’s Kodiak Island are over flowing with salmon.
The island’s brown bears typically feed first on salmon in early summer, followed by elderberries later in the season, in late August and September.
“What you have is a scrambling of the schedule,” said William Deacy, a biologist at Oregon State University that studied the phenomenon.
“It’s essentially like if breakfast and lunch were served at the same time and then there is nothing to eat until dinner. You have to choose between breakfast and lunch because you can only eat so much at a time.”
The study found that during the unusually warm summer of 2014, the bears, which would traditionally kill up to 75 percent of the salmon, were nowhere to be seen near the streams. Instead, they were in the hills busy munching on berries, which contain less protein and therefore take less energy to break down, causing them to gain weight more quickly.
Biologists warned that changes caused by a warming planet were behind the bears’ unusual behavior and could affect the entire ecosystem.
The researchers found that the forests around the streams suffered because the bears’ fish carcasses（残骸）were no longer there to enrich the soil.
“Bears switched from eating salmon to elderberries, disturbing an ecological link that typically fertilizes the ecosystems and generates high death rates for salmon,” the study said. On average, red elderberries are said to be ripening two and a half days earlier every decade. If the pattern continues, they will regularly overlap（重叠）with the salmon by 2070.
1. Brown bears have begun to favor ________ because of the climate change.| A．salmon |
| B．elderberries |
| C．warm temperatures |
| D．fresh water |
| A．Brown bears eat their breakfast and lunch at the same time. |
| B．We’re facing a hard problem with choosing the meals. |
| C．Climate change is disturbing the bears’ eating habits. |
| D．People’s biological clocks are changing regularly. |
| A．Natural. | B．Unusual. |
| C．Amazing. | D．Typical. |
| A．brown bears may become bigger and bigger |
| B．there will be a higher death rate for the salmon |
| C．red elderberries will probably be ripening in summer |
| D．the changes of bears’ behavior could affect the entire ecosystem |
【推荐2】Feedback is regarded as an essential component of a successful business culture. Used correctly, it can improve performance and teamwork. In a recent study, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the IESE Business School in Barcelona examined which type of feedback tended to lead to cooperative behaviors and which to competitive behaviors. To this end, 112 students of different subjects and 28 managers, all of whom had at least seven years of professional experience, were invited to participate in a laboratory experiment.
Groups of four participants played variants （变体）of a classic public goods game. Each player was given a fixed number of points to invest per round. During the time of the ten rounds, they were required to decide how many points they wanted to invest in a group project and how many in their own individual project. The rewards for cooperative behavior differed across the two experimental scenarios （方案），impacting participants, scores and finally how much money they were paid. In the first scenario, cooperative behavior on average led to a better score for the group, but to a worse score on the personal level. In the second scenario, cooperation paid off for both the group and the individual. Uncooperative behavior not only reduced the overall score, but also harmed the other players more than it did the participants themselves. After each round, the participants received feedback—either just on their own performance (individualistic feedback) or additional feedback on the performance of the group as a whole (joint outcome feedback) or on how they ranked relative to the other players (ranking feedback).
The results showed that the type of feedback received had a significant impact on participants' views of the scenario and on whether they behaved cooperatively or competitively. Participants who were given individual feedback behaved cooperatively in the cooperative scenario and increasingly selfishly in the competitive scenario over the rounds played. Participants who were given feedback on the performance of the group as a whole were generally interested in maintaining cooperation, regardless of the scenario.
1. What does the study try to find out?| A．What can improve employees' performance and teamwork. |
| B．What professional feedback is needed to inspire employees. |
| C．How the professional experience inspire teamwork among employees. |
| D．How different types of feedback impact interactions among employees. |
| A．Find at least two partners. |
| B．Play it more than ten rounds. |
| C．Set up and invest their own projects. |
| D．Invest every round with given points. |
| A．A better score for the group but a worse for individuals. |
| B．A worse score for the group and more harm to others. |
| C．A worse score for the group but a better for individuals. |
| D．A worse score for the group and more harm to themselves. |
| A．How different scenarios reward participants. |
| B．How participants given ranking feedback behaved. |
| C．How participants given individual feedback behaved. |
| D．How participants given joint outcome feedback behaved. |
【推荐3】When you have to cancel your Thanksgiving plans due to the spread of the COVID-19, you may find yourself craving companionship as much as that pumpkin pie. That’s because parts of the brain respond to loneliness much like they react to hunger, according to a study in Nature Neuroscience.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology scanned the brains of 40 healthy, social young adults after 10 hours of either fasting (禁食) or social isolation (隔离). They found that after being alone, participants’ neurological responses to social signals were similar to hungry people reacting to food — that is, certain areas of the brain linked to desire were turned on to start working.
For an isolated person, a picture of people laughing together caused the same areas of the brain to light up as when a hungry person looked at a big plate of pasta.
“Just like hunger is an unpleasant sensation that motivates us to seek out food and thirst motivates us to seek out water, loneliness is a biological need that motivates us to reconnect to others,” Holt-Lunstad told Insider.
Researchers were surprised to find that people who were prevented from socializing became much more focused on that need, and less reactive to hunger. As their loneliness increased, they became less responsive to images of food.
These latest findings suggest that the relationship between food and loneliness might be more complicated than we thought, despite the popular opinion of stress-eating to cope with social isolation. More research is needed to understand the complex ways people deal with loneliness.
Studies like this can help scientists understand how the brain processes loneliness, and possibly reduce the negative consequences. However, although loneliness may be similar to hunger, fixing it isn’t as easy as serving someone a hearty dinner because people are unique and they need varying levels of social interactions to meet their needs.
1. The underlined word “craving” in the first paragraph can be replaced by .| A．avoiding | B．desiring | C．preferring | D．ignoring |
| A．to find their brain responses to both loneliness and hunger |
| B．to provide explanations for their feeling lonely and hungry |
| C．to find how loneliness can have a negative impact on health |
| D．after they have been hungry and socially isolated for 10 hours |
| A．Hunger is an unpleasant sensation. |
| B．Hunger and thirst motivate us to feed ourselves. |
| C．Socializing is supposed to be basic human need as it is. |
| D．The effects of loneliness on health are comparable to other factors. |
| A．Loneliness may be fixed just as hunger is satisfied. |
| B．Situations of loneliness are complicated and hard to cope with. |
| C．Scientists have understood how the brain processes loneliness. |
| D．Loneliness is such a common and serious problem that we all have to suffer. |
