Who would win in a competition to memorize numbers, a chimp or a teenager? The teenager? Think again. Scientists have proved that chimps perform better than human beings when it comes to this kind of problem.
Memory is our ability to learn something, save it and recall it when needed. Our memories are important to our sense of self, our personalities, and our ability to understand the world.
Imagination and association can be useful too. By imagination, scientists mean picturing a word in your mind, while association means relating the word to something you already know.
| A．So why not try pictures with English words? |
| B．Then how do chimps have better memories than us? |
| C．Scientists say that there are different types of memory. |
| D．We may have to rethink what we believe about human memory. |
| E．Scientists have also found that people memorize things in different ways. |
| F．For example, the time it takes to compare the prices of a few items in a store. |
| G．Short-term and long-term memory differ in the amount of information they can store. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Studying is one of those things that's easy to lose motivation (动力) for.
Remember Why You Study
The first thing to do is to remember why you're studying. Reasons to study may include keeping up your overall grades or passing a class.
Your environment has an effect on your emotional state. So make sure you're studying in a place that helps. Try cleaning and tidying up your desk and remove distractions from your space as well, like cell phones. It also may be a good idea to make sure you're not so comfortable in your workspace that you fall asleep or feel lazy.
Change Locations
Sometimes, your typical studying location may get boring. If you're having a hard time motivating yourself, try moving to a new environment to study. Going to the local library or a coffee shop can make you feel like you're really "doing something" and can promote your motivation. If you can't go to a library or coffee shop, you can try just moving your work into another room.
| A．Clear Your Desk |
| B．Prepare Your Environment |
| C．Environment can influence your emotions |
| D．In short, motivation actually often follows action |
| E．But regaining motivation for studying isn't impossible |
| F．Take some time to reflect on what your reason for studying might be |
| G．Sitting upright at a desk can put you in the right mental mood to dig into your work |
【推荐2】Now VAR technology is fully combined with the global game of soccer and made its debut (首次亮相) at the 2018 World Cup.
The VAR team supported the judges from a centralized video room. The operators selected and provided the best angles from the relevant broadcast cameras plus two additional offside cameras.
| A．VAR works as video judges |
| B．If one team is likely to win a game |
| C．It is hard to avoid and VAR is necessary |
| D．Now VAR has incurred heated discussion |
| E．Once they decide an incident is reviewable |
| F．Throughout a match they are constantly checking for mistakes |
| G．VAR can serve to remove such scenes and get the game moving again |
【推荐3】There’s a Symphony Just Below the Surface — Can You Hear It?
Imagine it’s your birthday, and your friends and family pool their money to get you the best gift you can imagine: tickets for fabulous seats to see your favorite musical act. But what if you got to the venue and something terrible had just happened to you?
Life always has its music, and we don’t need to be front-row center at a concert to hear it. Throughout our lives, no matter what else is going on, a melody is present. But we are often so focused on the present moment that we fail to hear the melody.
We can become magnificent listeners to life, with enough practice. And let’s face it, this is something we were born to do, so the skill is there, waiting for us to employ it. We can tap into the music, and when we do find ourselves distracted from it, we can use consciousness to bring us right back. It is as simple as saying, “OK, I’m distracted again; I am going to start listening again.”
Life is always playing music, but we have to listen, and we listen by being present. We can do this.
| A．As humans, we have been given a wonderful gift |
| B．These feelings may last several minutes or even last several hours |
| C．In a word, wisdom and patience are the things that listening to the music of life requires |
| D．Soon, we will find that we have to redirect ourselves less and less, and we hear the music more and more |
| E．You’d broken your knees, say, or you learned of a failure of exam |
| F．The noise of our worry drowns out all the other things we might otherwise hear and enjoy |
| G．We just need to realize and engage with the music of life that is always playing |
【推荐1】In the UK, the Met Office — which keeps track of the weather — chooses the names for storms but they’re asking for members of the public to help by suggesting new ones. It’s five years since they first asked people for ideas and that time they got more than 10,000 suggestions.
Why do storms have names?
The Met Office decided to start giving storms names back in 2014, in the same way they do in America. The first windstorm to be named was Abigail on 10 November, 2015.
Since September 2015, the Met Office has asked people for suggestions for storm names. The most popular names put forward by the public are made into a list, along with other names suggested by Met Office. Sometimes the UK will be hit by storms from Europe or other countries, and the storm will keep the name the first country gave it — even if it doesn’t follow the UK’s alphabetical order - like Storm Jorge from Spain which hit Europe in February.
How big do storms have to be to get a name?
Not all storms will be big enough to get names — only those expected to cause significant damage. A storm will be named when it has the potential to cause an amber ‘be prepared’ or red ‘take action’ warning.
Who decides if they’re named after girls or boys?
The UK storms will take it in turns to be girls ‘or boys’ names.
Which storm name will be picked first?
| A．How are the names picked |
| B．What names do people like most |
| C．Unexpectedly, it’s becoming popular that people chase storms in different locations |
| D．The Met Office hoped that naming big storms will make people more aware of them and how dangerous they can be |
| E．They will be taken from the list in alphabetical order, but there are no storms that start with the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z |
| F．Strangely, research shows that hurricanes with female names are more likely to hurt more people than those with males names |
| G．During these years we’ve had lots of storms with different names including Storm Francis, Storm Dennis, and Storm Ophelia |
【推荐2】How people read facial expressions of others says a lot about their cultural practices, a new study suggests.
In the study, about 80 Japanese and American student participants viewed a series of images (图像), each of which consisted of one center model and four background models. The researchers manipulated (操纵) the facial expression (happy, angry, sad) of the center or background models and asked the participants to determine the emotion (情绪) of the center figure.
The majority of Japanese participants (72%) reported that their judgments of the center persons emotions were influenced by the emotions of the background figures, while the same percentage of western participants reported they were not influenced by the background figures.
“What we found is quite interesting,” says Takahiko Masuda, a psychology professor from the University of Alberta. “Our results show that when Americans are trying to figure out how a person is feeling, they selectively focus on that particular person’s facial expression, while Japanese consider the emotions of the other people in the situation.”
“This may be because Japanese attention is not concentrated on the individual, but includes everyone in the group,” says Masuda.
In another round of image-viewing, researchers monitored the eye movements of the participants and again the results indicated that the Japanese looked at the surrounding people more than the westerners when judging the situation.
While both the Japanese and westerners looked to the central figure during the first second of viewing the photo, the Japanese looked to the background figures at the very next second, while westerners continued to focus on the central figure.
“East Asians seem to see people in terms of the relationships to others,” says Masuda. People raised in the western culture tend to separate a person from their surroundings, while East Asians are accustomed to “kuuki wo yomu”, which literally translates to “reading the air” of a situation. “As a result, they think that even surrounding people’s facial expressions are an informative source to understand the particular person’s emotion,” says Masuda.
1. Why were there background models in the study?| A．To show the participants various facial expressions. |
| B．To let the participants figure out their emotions. |
| C．To see whether they would influence the center model. |
| D．To see whether they would influence the participants’ judgments. |
| A．spent more time looking at the background models |
| B．spent less time looking at the background models |
| C．determined the emotion of the center model more quickly |
| D．determined the emotion of the background models more slowly |
| A．dealing with a situation |
| B．reading facial expressions |
| C．looking at the surroundings |
| D．knowing the surrounding people |
| A．Facial Expressions Show Emotions |
| B．Culture Affects How We Read Faces |
| C．Team Work Strengthens Relationship |
| D．Cultural Differences Determine How We Feel |
【推荐3】Boost your Memory
When trying to memorize new material, it’s easy to assume that the more work you put in, the better you will perform.
Although it’s known that we should pace our studies, new research suggests that we should aim for “minimal distraction” during these breaks.
The memory-boosting benefits of undisturbed rest were documented in 1900. In one experiment, the researcher first asked the participants to learn a list of syllables. Following a short period, half the group was immediately given a second list to learn, while the rest were given a six-minute break before continuing.
In the early 2000s, two other researchers led several follow-up studies. In healthy participants, they have found that short periods of rest can also improve our memory of places. More crucially, this advantage stays a week after the original learning task and it seems to benefit young and old people alike.
The exact mechanism is still unknown. It is now accepted that once memories are initially encoded, they pass through a period of consolidation (巩固) that bond them in long-term storage.
| A．Our memory is easily distracted by new information. |
| B．This was once thought to happen primarily during sleep. |
| C．We tend to avoid activities contradictory to memory tasks. |
| D．Yet doing nothing occasionally maybe exactly what you need. |
| E．So don’t check your emails, or surf the web on your smartphone. |
| F．When tested one hour later, both groups showed strikingly different patterns of recall. |
| G．They have also found similar benefits for people in the earlier stages of Alzheimer’s disease. |
