Visual Symbols and the Blind
From several recent studies, it has become clear that blind people can appreciate the use of outlines and perspectives to describe the arrangement of objects and other surfaces in space. But pictures are more than literal representations.
This fact was drawn to my attention dramatically when a blind woman in one of my investigations decided on her own initiative to draw a wheel as it was spinning. To show this motion, she traced a curve inside the circle(Fig. 1). I was surprised. Lines of motion, such as the one she used, are a very recent invention in the history of illustration.
When I asked several other blind study subjects to draw a spinning wheel, one particularly clever interpretation appeared repeatedly: several subjects showed the wheel’s spokes(把柄)as curved lines. When asked about these curves, they all described them as metaphorical ways of suggesting motion. Majority rule would argue that this device somehow indicated motion very well. But was it a better indicator than, say, broken or wavy lines—or any other kind of line, for that matter? The answer was not clear. So I decided to test whether various lines of motion were liable ways of showing movement or if they were merely specific marks. Moreover, I wanted to discover whether there were differences in how the blind and the sighted interpreted lines of motion.
To search out these answers, I created raised—line drawings of five different wheels, depicting spokes with lines that curved, bent, waved, dotted and extended beyond the perimeter of the wheel. I then asked eighteen blind volunteers to feel the wheels and assign one of the following motions to each wheel: shaky, spinning fast, spinning steadily, jerking or braking. My control group consisted of eighteen sighted undergraduates from the University of Toronto.
All but one of the blind subjects assigned distinctive motions to each wheel. Most guessed that the curved spokes indicated that the wheel was spinning steadily; the wavy spokes, they thought, suggested that the wheel was shaky; and the bent spokes were taken as a sign that the wheel was jerking. Subjects assumed that the spokes extending beyond the wheel’s perimeter signified that the wheel had its brakes on and that dotted spokes indicated the wheel was spinning quickly.
In addition, the favoured description for the sighted was the favoured description for the blind in every instance. What is more, the consensus among the sighted was barely higher than that among the blind. Because motion devices are unfamiliar to the blind, the task I gave them involved some problem solving. Evidently, however, the blind not only figured out meanings for each line of motion, but as a group they generally came up with the same meaning at least as frequently as did sighted subjects.
1. The author makes the point that blind people___________.| A．can draw accurately | B．may be interested in studying art |
| C．can recognise conventions such as perspective | D．can draw outlines of different objects and surfaces |
| A．drew a circle on her own initiative | B．was the first person to use lines of motion |
| C．included a symbol representing movement | D．did not understand what a wheel looked like |
| A．got better results than the sighted undergraduates |
| B．worked together well as a group in solving problems |
| C．could control the movement of wheels very accurately |
| D．had good understanding of symbols representing movement |
| A．steadily spinning | B．rapidly spinning | C．shaky | D．jerking |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Nature soothes(抚慰)our stressed-out souls. We know that nature is the best prescription, and new research suggests we can gain benefits while visiting parks.
"In general,we found park visitors reported an improvement in emotional well-being(幸福感)after the park visit.”the study's lead author and University of Alabama at Birmingham professor Hon K. Yuen said in a statement.“
For the study, 94 adults visited three city parks in Mountain Brook, Alabama, completing a questionnaire about their subjective well-being before and after their visit.
The study group was truly small. as the study's co-author and another UAB professor, Gavin Jenkins, acknowledges.
| A．Something was used to track their physical activity. |
| B．You usually visit a small green space in your neighborhood. |
| C．However, its findings pointed out the importance of city parks. |
| D．If you want to feel happier, you just need to exercise for 20 minutes in a park. |
| E．The best part is that you needn't visit a national park or go far out of your way. |
| F．This means people can benefit from visiting a nearby park, regardless of physical ability. |
| G．But we didn't find levels of physical activity are linked to improved emotional well-being. |
【推荐2】If you're one of the millions of those who use escalators each year, you are probably deeply familiar with the vertical grooves（竖凹槽）that cover each stair. Few of us have stopped to consider why they exist, though. In fact, it's one of the everyday things we take for granted.
But it is a little complicating when you think about it. Sure, the deep, grey lines make an escalator's metal stairs more appealing to the eye. But regular stairs don't have grooves like these; why do escalators need them? Is it because of the movement?
It turns out those grooves serve a more functional purpose. And, yes, it does have to do with the movement, as well as with general cleanliness! Anyone who has ridden an escalator knows that the steps everlastingly circulate from the top to the bottom. You've surely noticed the ridged yellow lip at the top of the escalator. But here's what you may not have noticed: As an escalator's steps flatten, this ridge—also called the comb plate—sweeps away any trash or litter that might have fallen on the stairs. Those grooves lock the step and comb plate together, which makes it harder for any dangerous materials to slide underneath the lip. This prevents foreign objects from getting stuck in that gap, potentially causing the escalator to stop, or worse, break down completely.
That's not the only reason why the grooves were created, though. They are also a good place for water to pool together, protecting you from a bad fall on the slick surface.
So the next time you step on an escalator, take a moment to appreciate those metal grooves. They exist to make sure you get to your office meeting on time.
1. What are the first two paragraphs trying to say?| A．Millions of people use escalators every year. |
| B．Few people think much about the grooves. |
| C．Escalators are complicated machines. |
| D．Grooves make the stairs look better. |
| A．clean off dangerous objects. |
| B． keep the stairs in movement. |
| C．flatten the steps. |
| D．lock the steps. |
| A．Smooth. | B．Sticky. |
| C．Steep. | D．Slippery. |
| A．The importance of escalators. |
| B．The reasons for grooves on stairs. |
| C．The look of grooves in escalators. |
| D．The safe ways of riding escalators. |
The two-year study compared children who were read in this way in class with children who were not. Those whose teachers most often discussed the print showed clearly higher skills in reading, spelling and understanding. These results were found one year and even two years later.
Shayne Piasta, an assistant professor of teaching and learning at Ohio State University, was an author of the study. She says most pre-school teachers would find this method manageable and would need only a small change in the way they teach. They already read story-books in class. The only difference would be increased attention to the printed text. “If you get children to pay attention to letters and words, it makes sense that they will do better at word recognition and spelling.” But she says research suggests that very few parents and teachers do this in a systematic way.
More than 300 children aged four and five were observed in classrooms. They came from poor families and were below average in their language skills. For thirty weeks, the children took part in a program called Project STAR--- Sit Together and Read. The project is based at Ohio State. It tests the short-term and long-term results of reading regularly to pre-school children in their classrooms.
There are different ways that adults can talk to children about print. They can point to a letter and discuss it, and even trace the shape with a finger. They can point out a word and discuss the meaning of the print or how the words tell the story. And they can talk about the organization of the print--- for instance, showing how words are written left to right in English.
1. What do we know about the ways pre-school children are usually taught?
| A．More attention is paid to the pictures ,with words and letters being ignored. |
| B．Preference is given to the shape of letters and the organization of the print. |
| C．The focus of the teaching is on bringing them up to be good readers. |
| D．Equal attention is paid to the texts and the pictures. |
| A．Teach children how to draw pictures to get an idea of what they mean. |
| B．Change the way they teach and pay more attention to words and letters. |
| C．Adopt different methods according to the students’ difference in reading skills. |
| D．Read storybooks to children rather than explain the meaning of the pictures. |
| A．Many teachers want to change their way of teaching pre-school children. |
| B．Attention on the pictures has made the children uninterested in reading. |
| C．Project STAR aims to research into the results of reading books to pre-school children in the classroom. |
| D．Teachers are often prevented from taking different approaches to language teaching. |
| A．Fashion. | B．Economy . | C．Entertainment. | D．Education. |
【推荐1】Looking at the photos of public celebrations for International Pillow Fight Day in the news and social media from the 50 cities around the world, one question occurred to me: What are pillows really stuffed with? Not physically, but symbolically? Armed with nothing more than bring-our-own sacrificial cushions, strangers struck heavily each other in playful feather from Amsterdam to Atlanta, Warsaw to Washington DC. But why? Is there anything more to this delightful celebration?
As a cultural sign, the pillow is falsely soft. Since at least the 16th century, the humble pillow has been given unexpected meanings. The Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu tells a famous story about a wise man who meets a depressed young scholar at an inn and offers him a magic pillow filled with the most vivid dreams of a seemingly more fulfilling life. When the young man awakens to discover that his happy 50-year dream has in fact come and gone in the short space of an after-noon’s nap, our impression of the pillow’s power shifts from wonder to terror.
Succeeding writers have likewise seized upon the pillow. When the 19th-century English novelist Charlotte Bronte poetically observed “a ruffled (不平的,起皱的) mind makes a restless pillow”, she didn’t just change the expected order of the adjectives and nouns, but instead she made unclear the boundaries between mind and matter — the thing resting and the thing rested upon.
That can be considered as a trick which perhaps Bronte learned from the Renaissance philosopher Montaigne, who once insisted that “ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head”. On Montaigne’s thinking, intelligence and happiness confront each other forever in a pillow fight that only one can win.
Based on the words of Tang, Bronte, and Montaigne, we can perhaps more easily measure the attraction of the global pillow fight. Like a ritual of release, the annual international pillow fight amounts to a kind of cleansing, a brushing off of daily worries, an emptying of the world’s collective mind. Rather than a launch-pad for weightless rest, the pillow is a symbol of heavy thought: an anchor that drags the world’s soul down- one that must be lightened.
1. The writer uses the example of Tang Xianzu, wanting to illustrate that ________.| A．dreams are always wonderful while the real world is cruel |
| B．pillows sometimes bless people with satisfactory dreams |
| C．people’s impression of pillows changes from wonder to terror |
| D．pillows symbolically convey the meaning in contrast to their soft appearance |
| A．learned a trick from the Renaissance philosopher Montaigne |
| B．was likely to have been influenced by the thoughts of the Renaissance |
| C．regarded pillows as reflections of our minds |
| D．wrote poems about pillows |
| A．pillows give us comfort |
| B．pillows make people more intelligent |
| C．people with plenty of thoughts have no inner peace |
| D．people can easily fall asleep when they know little |
| A．Because it is a ritual of release. | B．Because it makes life delightful. |
| C．Because it comforts restless minds. | D．Because it contains a profound meaning of life. |
【推荐2】For years, studies have found that first-generation college students — those who do not have a parent with a college degree — lag behind other students on a range of education achievement factors. Their grades are lower and their dropout rates are higher. But since such students are most likely to advance economically if they succeed in higher education, colleges and universities have pushed for decades to recruit more of them. This has created a ‘paradox’ in that recruiting first-generation students, but then watching many of them fail, means that higher education has ‘continued to reproduce and widen, rather than close’ the achievement gap based on social class, according to the depressing beginning of a paper set to be published in the journal Psychological Science.
But the article is actually quite optimistic, as it outlines a potential solution to this problem, suggesting that an approach (which involves a one-hour, next-to-no-cost program) can close 63 percent of the achievement gap (measured by such factors as grades) between first-generation and other students.
The authors of the paper are from different universities, and their findings are based on a study involving 147 students (who completed the project) at an unnamed private university. First generation was defined as not having a parent with a four-year college degree. Most of the first-generation students (59.1 percent) were recipients of Pell Grants, a federal grant for undergraduates with financial needs, while this was true only for 8.6 percent of the students with at least one parent with a four-year degree.
Their thesis — that a relatively modest intervention could have a big impact — was based on the view that first-generation students may be most lacking not in potential but in practical knowledge about how to deal with the issues that face most college students. They cite past research by several authors to show that this is the gap that must be narrowed to close the achievement gap.
Many first-generation students “struggle to navigate the middle-class culture of higher education, learn the rules of the game, and take advantage of college resources,” they write. And this becomes more of a problem when colleges don’t talk about the class advantage and disadvantages of different groups of students. Because U.S. colleges and universities seldom acknowledge how social class can affect students’ educational experience, many first-generation students lack sight about why they are struggling and do not understand how students like them can improve.
1. The authors of the research article are optimistic because _____________.| A．the problem is solvable |
| B．their approach is costless |
| C．the recruiting rate has increased |
| D．their findings appeal to students |
| A．study at private universities |
| B．are from single-parent families |
| C．are in need of financial support |
| D．have failed their college education |
| A．are actually indifferent to the achievement gap |
| B．are inexperienced in handling their issues at college |
| C．may lack opportunities to apply for research projects |
| D．can have a potential influence on other students |
| A．universities often reject the culture of the middle-class |
| B．students are usually to blame for their lack of resources |
| C．social class greatly helps enrich one’s educational experience |
| D．colleges are partly responsible for the problem in question |
【推荐3】For the kids who have just started to read, choosing the right books is essential and their parents should be there to help them.
A proper book classification system would be of great help in this regard, since most parents do not know which books suit their children’s reading levels the most. An effective classification system for children’s books would help overcome this problem.
Chinese bookstores, online or offline, still prefer to use age rather than reading ability to categorize what they sell. In fact, reading ability and interests vary from child to child even when they are at the same age. This early form of classification is accepted by most bookstores and publishers, yet many young readers get books that are nowhere near their targeted reading levels.
China has at least 200 million children under the age of 14, and their enthusiasm for reading has increased over the years. The publishers of children’s books should try to introduce a juvenile-centered classification system to help their readers choose books that are suitable for their reading abilities.
Some don’t trust the call for more effective book classification, mentioning the need for youngsters to read extensively and avoid restricting themselves to one or two categories. There is a strong case for resisting selective reading, but not book classification, which is designed to help young children develop good reading habits and hold onto them in the long run.
Studies have found that kids are less likely to be into reading if they have not developed such a habit before the age of 10. That said, it is in their best interests to adopt targeted reading during childhood, as this can greatly improve their comprehension abilities. So greater efforts should be put into designing a book classification system that meets the needs of young readers.
1. A proper book classification system should ________.| A．be on an age basis |
| B．limit readers to one or two categories |
| C．help readers get books suitable for their reading levels |
| D．benefit all the bookstores and publishers |
| A．Young children. | B．Publishers. |
| C．Reading levels. | D．Reading habits. |
| A．There is a strong case for resisting book classification. |
| B．Everyone doesn’t support a more effective book classification. |
| C．Youngsters should be restricted to a few categories of books. |
| D．Youngsters don’t need to read extensively. |
| A．Dissatisfied. | B．Ambiguous. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Unconcerned. |
