Studies have shown most people fail to realize how much time they spend on their smart-phones each day.
Frank and Amelia's family were put to a test, using a free app called "Moment-screen Time Tracker". The Vascellaros—Frank, Amelia, 14-year-old twins Frankie and Joe, and 17-year-old Sam—all said they did not really know they were spending so much time on their phones each day.
“Honestly, I don't feel like I'm on my phone a lot," Amelia Vascellaro said. Amelia was on her phone far less often than Frank, according to the app. While Amelia spent about an hour per day on the phone, Frank spent close to four hours on his phone—which came as a shock to him. The children's times varied but they often spent more than a couple of hours on the phone as well.
Minneapolis-based Dr Kirsten Lind Seal sees phone usage come up a lot among families. Lind Seal said many family members' phone use has become problematic.
“If we hear more than once, 'Do you have to be on your phone right now? Can you please put your phone down? Did you hear what I said?' it may be a sign that it is negatively influencing our family relationships and our daily lives," she said.
Lind Seal said actually paying attention to how much time one spends on the phone is a good first step in deciding when to put it down.
She asks parents to encourage more face-to-face communication for teens and young adults as they continue developing their social and emotional skills. “What we find is that we are really losing out on empathy—the ability to understand other people's feelings and problems——when we spend a lot of time on our smart-phones to communicate with other people she said.
1. How did the families tested by the app feel about the test results?| A．Satisfied. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Uninterested. | D．Astonished. |
| A．To encourage people to live a simple life. |
| B．To explain the signs of problematic phone use. |
| C．To show the importance of close relationships. |
| D．To ask people if they use phones too much. |
| A．We should make more face-to-face communication. |
| B．We can understand each other better using smartphones. |
| C．Our ability of empathy is strengthened by smartphones. |
| D．Smartphone usage improves the teens' emotional skills. |
| A．A diary. | B．A guidebook. |
| C．A novel. | D．A magazine. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】As any parent knows too well, sometimes a little white lie is the only way to make a naughty child quiet. Indeed, parents have shared the top white lies they’ve told their children. While some of them are amusing, others are somewhat cruel.
“Father Christmas is watching you,” “Carrots will make you see in the dark” and “Your pet has gone to live on a farm” are among the top white lies parents tell their children. The top 20 list of little lies that adults use shows that four in five parents have told their children something that isn’t true. The threat of Father Christmas is on the top, with 62 percent of parents employing St. Nick to keep their kids under control. The second on the list is: “We’ll see”, which any little one knows really means “no”.
The majority of British people say that they lie to their children to protect their innocence, to save them from being upset or to stop them behaving badly. The top white lie told to kids about their pets is “your pet has to live on a farm in the countryside”, which is employed after one dies or has gone missing. On average, parents think that children are ready to start learning about death at the age of seven and a half.
One 62-year-old recalled that when he was four, his cat ran away, because it kept having its tail pulled. It was 53 years later that it was revealed that the cat had actually been given away to stop it from scratching the furniture. One respondent (应答者) said that he still remembered that when he was young, he believed his father’s statement that the entire world used to be in black and white before colour photography came along.
Forty percent of parents say that they would definitely lie to their children to keep up their belief in Father Christmas, and overall say they’d certainly tell the truth about a pet dying. However, one in ten parents say they’ve replaced their children’s dead pet with a one looking the same to cheat their children into believing it was still alive and well, found the study by Blue Cross pet charity.
1. The threat of Father Christmas which is used to control children shows that .| A．some children fear and respect Father Christmas |
| B．Father Christmas is more important than parents |
| C．children should learn more about festivals |
| D．Father Christmas does live in the world |
| A．Children don’t understand why their parents tell white lies. |
| B．Parents’ white lies may do harm to their children. |
| C．Children don’t really mind their parents’ white lies. |
| D．Parents’ white lies may leave a deep impression on their children |
| A．Parents’ different understandings of while lies. |
| B．Parents’ different attitudes to telling white lies. |
| C．Parents’ different worries about white lies. |
| D．Parents’ different white lies. |
【推荐2】If you are like most people, your intelligence varies from season to season. You are probably a lot sharper in spring than you are at any other time of the year. A noted scientist, Ellsworth Huntington, concluded from other men’s work and his own among people in different climates that climate and temperature have a definite effect on our mental abilities.
He found that cool weather is much more favorable for creative thinking than summer heat. This does not mean that all people are less intelligent in summer than they are during the rest of the year. It does mean, however, that the mental abilities of large numbers of people tend to be lowest in the summer.
Spring appears to be the best period of the year for thinking; one reason may be that in the spring man’s mental abilities are affected by the same factors that bring about great changes in all nature.
Fall is the next best season, then winter. As for summer, it seems to be a good time to take a long vacation from thinking.
1. According to the passage, the mental abilities of most people________.| A．are different from season to season | B．are the same in all seasons |
| C．tend to be the lowest in winter | D．tend to be the lowest in fall |
| A．A great effect on everyone’s intelligence. | B．Some effect on most people’s intelligence. |
| C．Effect on only a few people’s intelligence. | D．No effect on people’s intelligence. |
| A．Cool weather is good for thinking. |
| B．Winter is the second best season for thinking. |
| C．Summer is a good time to take a long vacation from thinking. |
| D．Nature’s changes may affect our mental abilities. |
| A．During spring and fall. | B．During winter. |
| C．During summer. | D．During summer and winter. |
【推荐3】Children with ADHD (多动症) find it difficult to concentrate. They can be hyperactive (过度活跃的), suffer from poor memory or fail to plan and organise their time. Medicines do not work for all and therefore many parents are ready to try all possible forms of treatment to ease their children’s symptoms (症状), such as computer games targeted at easing ADHD symptoms.
However a new study conducted by Aida Bikic, a visiting researcher at the University of Southern Denmark shows that their effectiveness is doubtful for most ADHD symptoms. When Bikic started to study how the customised (定制的) games worked, she had positive expectations, because the traditional treatment options for children and adults with ADHD are limited. “There are children that receive medicine and they can be helped, but the research shows that the effect declines in others, and that there’s about 20 to 30 per cent who do not respond at all to medication. It is important that we find a supplementary treatment for these children,” says Bikic.
Bikic and her colleagues asked 70 children with ADHD to play the computer game ACTIVATETM — a game designed to improve working memory, self-control, attention, and other cognitive (认知的) functions through brain training exercises. After playing the game for 40 minutes a day, six days a week for eight weeks, the children’s progress was evaluated (评估) based on cognitive tests and reports from teachers and parents to see if they had noticed a change in relation to the children’s ADHD symptoms. The children’s concentration and attention span did not improve. But their ability to plan did.
When some scientists looked into the results, they saw that children with ADHD who weren’t hyperactive got more out of the games than hyperactive children. These children had their working memory and — according to their parents — their problem-solving skill improved in their everyday lives. However, hyperactive children only had their planning skill improved.
The problem with these computer games is that they try to treat a wide range of ADHD symptoms, says Bikic, even though scientists know that ADHD children can have many different symptoms and cognitive difficulties.
Senior scientist and assistant lecturer Ole Jakob Storebø also studies ADHD at the Psychiatric Research Unit at Region Zealand, Denmark. He describes Bikic’s work as quality work, but not extensive enough to be sure of the conclusions. The group of participants in the study is so broad that it is really difficult to say who could benefit from the games, says Storebø. “They are studying the average patient. If they could have a more selective population so that they could see who had specific problems, then they might get more precise results,” he says.
Storebø agrees with Bikic that the games are only effective if you know what kind of ADHD your child has and what the game is specifically designed to do. But he still thinks that parents should try the games out on their children and see if it makes a difference to them. “We recommend that we use computer games, but the evidence is not especially strong,” says Storebø. “Some can have success with medicine, others with behavioural training, and others have success with computer games in combination with other treatments, and so on. It depends on the individual patient.”
1. We can learn from Paragraph 1 that _____.| A．medicines are useless for ADHD |
| B．not all children with ADHD have a poor memory |
| C．most parents believe the effect of computer games on ADHD |
| D．medicines and computer games are the main treatments for ADHD now |
| A．Extra. | B．Popular. |
| C．Immediate. | D．Latest. |
| A．are only useful for ADHD children without hyperactivity |
| B．are beneficial only for ADHD children’s planning skill |
| C．can reduce ADHD children’s certain symptoms |
| D．can improve ADHD children’s memory |
| A．Objective. | B．Admiring. |
| C．Doubtful. | D．Disappointed. |
| A．find out what type of ADHD their children have |
| B．let their ADHD children try playing computer games |
| C．try different treatments to cure their children’s ADHD |
| D．design special computer games for their ADHD children |
| A．Research on ADHD children has achieved great success. |
| B．It is difficult to find a treatment for a wide range of ADHD symptoms. |
| C．Customised computer games can make ADHD children better planners. |
| D．Traditional treatments for ADHD will be replaced by computer games. |
【推荐1】At any moment, about half the world’s population is wearing denim（牛仔布）clothes. But few realize tiny bits of denim have been adding up to a surprising amount of pollution in water, as a new study shows.
Sam Athey, one of the study’s authors, says, “Even though denim is made of a natural material—cotton, it contains chemicals.” Cotton fibers were treated with many types of chemicals, she notes. Some improve its durability and feel. Others give denim its distinctive blue color.
Athey and her team washed jeans and found that about 50,000 microfibers came off from each pair per wash. Not all of those fibers make their way into the environment. Wastewater treatment plants catch about 83 to 99 percent of them. Catching 99 percent may sound pretty good. But one percent of 50,000 is still 500 fibers per wash. And since every pair of jeans is washed again and again, it still adds up to lots of microfibers entering the water environment.
Denim microfibers showed up in sediment（沉淀物）from the Great Lakes. More of these fibers polluted a series of shallow lakes in southern Ontario. They even turned up in sediment from the Arctic Ocean in northern Canada. The team found denim accounted for 12 to 23 percent of microfibers in the sediment. There were other microfibers too. But the team focused on denim because so many people wear jeans.
“Everyone wears jeans so they could be our largest input of microfibers into our streams and soils,” Athey says. “An easy way to limit that is by washing our jeans less often.” Athey grew up thinking she should wash her jeans after wearing them every couple of times, but most jean companies recommend washing them no more than once a month. “The solution is not that you shouldn’t wear jeans,” she says. “We need to buy fewer denim clothes and only wash them when they truly need it.”
1. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?| A．Chemicals are contained in natural cotton. |
| B．Chemicals can make denim colorful. |
| C．Chemicals prevent fibers from falling. |
| D．Chemicals can make the life of denim longer. |
| A．Denim. | B．Sediment. | C．Microfibers. | D．Chemicals. |
| A．To avoid wearing jeans. | B．To reduce denim consumption. |
| C．To wash jeans more often. | D．To limit input in denim production. |
| A．Science. | B．Entertainment. | C．Tourism. | D．Geography. |
【推荐2】The Land Under the Sea
Ten thousand years ago, as the last ice age ended, sea levels around the world were far lower than they are today. Much of the land under both the North Sea to the east of Britain and the English Channel which now separates France and Britain was part of a huge region of forests and grassy plains. Then the climate gradually became warmer and the water trapped in large masses of ice was released.
Now the development of advanced sonar (声纳) technology, known as bathymetry, is making it possible to study this flooded landscape in extraordinary detail. A special echo (回声) sounder is fixed to the bottom of a survey ship and it makes wide sweeps across the seabed. While previous technology has only been able to produce two-dimensional images, bathymetry can now use computers, satellite-positioning equipment and special software to create accurate and remarkably detailed maps. For the first time, an ancient riverbed jumps out of the three-dimensional image. The site of pre-historic settlements can now be pinpointed.
According to expert Linda Andrews, this technological development is of huge significance. “We now have the ability to map the seabed as accurately as we can map dry land,” she says.
Once bathymetric techniques have identified sites where people might have built their homes and villages, divers can be sent down to investigate further. Robot submarines (潜艇) can also be used, and researchers hope they will find stone tools and wood from houses as proof of human activity. The idea shared by many people in Britain of their country as a natural island kingdom will be challenged by the findings: Britain has been inhabited for about 500,000 years and much of this time it has been linked on and off to continental Europe. It remains to be seen how far this new awareness is taken on board, however.
In fact, the use of bathymetry will not be limited to the study of lost landscapes and ancient settlements. It will also be vital in finding ships that have been destroyed in accidents. In addition, commercial applications are a real possibility. Aggregates (骨材) for the construction industry are becoming increasingly expensive, and bathymetry can be used to identify suitable sites for digging for this material. Mapping the seabed will also identify places where rare plants and shellfish are living. Digging at such sites should be prevented, either to work for a profit or to make deeper waterways for massive container ships.
1. How does bathymetry work?| A．It has an echo sounder placed on the seabed. |
| B．It makes use of a number of different devices. |
| C．It produces two-dimensional images of the sea floor. |
| D．It bases its calculations on the location of construction sites. |
| A．attract investment in the research under the sea |
| B．inspire people to take an interest in modern technology |
| C．adapt the attitudes of the British to their country’s history |
| D．receive confirmation of rebuilding ancient man-made objects |
| A．identify new species of plants and animals | B．provide the precise location of sunken ships |
| C．evaluate the cost of seeking certain resources | D．promote the development of deeper waterways |
【推荐3】Elephants on the coast of Thailand are acting strangely. They stamp their feet and want to move towards the hills. The sea draws back from the beaches. Fish flop (扑腾) on the seabed. Suddenly, a huge wave appears. This is no ordinary wave. It is a tsunami!
Tsunami waves are larger and faster than normal surface waves. A tsunami wave can travel fast as a jet plane and can be as tall as a ten-storey building. Tsunamis begin when the ocean rises or falls very suddenly. Lots of seawater is displaced and this movement causes huge waves.
If a tsunami happens, there must be some kind of force that causes the ocean water to become moved. Most tsunamis are caused by underwater earthquakes. Sometimes, volcanoes, and slides, and large icebergs may also cause one of these huge waves.
Tsunamis are extremely powerful. Ordinary waves lose power when they break. Tsunami waves can remain powerful for several days. Because tsunami waves are so strong, they can kill people, damage buildings, and completely ruin an ecosystem in just one hour.
Scientists have no way of telling people in advance when a tsunami will hit. However, if a powerful enough earthquake happens, scientists can send out a warning or a watch. A warning means that a tsunami will very likely hit soon. A watch means that conditions are suitable for a tsunami. When people receive a watch or a warning, they have more time to prepare. It’s best to get prepared before a tsunami is on the way!
1. What’s the main idea of the first paragraph?| A．The power of the tsunami. | B．The signs of the tsunami. |
| C．The causes of the tsunami. | D．The damages from the tsunami. |
| A．Moved. | B．Trapped. | C．Destroyed. | D．Stopped. |
| A．The floods, storms, and typhoons. |
| B．The earthquake that happens on the land. |
| C．The volcanoes, and slides, and large icebergs. |
| D．The force that causes ocean water to get displaced. |
| A．A warning is more serious than a watch. |
| B．A watch is more serious than a warning. |
| C．A watch is set out before a big earthquake. |
| D．There are many ways to tell a tsunami in advance. |
