1 . Aristotle thought the face was a window onto a person’s mind. Cicero agreed. Two thousand years passed, and facial expressions are still commonly thought to be a universally valid way to judge other people’s feelings, irrespective of age, sex and culture. A raised eyebrow suggests confusion. A smile indicates happiness.
Or do they? An analysis of hundreds of research papers that examined the relationship between facial expressions and underlying emotions has uncovered a surprising conclusion: there is no good scientific evidence to suggest that there are such things as recognizable facial expressions for basic emotions which are universal across cultures. Just because a person is not smiling, the researchers found, does not mean that person is unhappy.
This may raise questions about the efforts of information-technology companies to develop artificial-intelligence algorithms (算法) which can recognize facial expressions and work out a person’s underlying emotional state. Microsoft, for example, claims its “Emotion API” is able to detect what people are feeling by examining video footage of them. Another of the study’s authors, however, expressed scepticism. Aleix Martinez, a computer engineer at Ohio State University, said that companies attempting to obtain emotions from images of faces have failed to understand the importance of context.
For a start, facial expression is but one of a number of non-verbal ways，such as body posture, that people use to communicate with each other. Machine recognition of emotion needs to take account of these as well. But context can reach further than that. Dr Martinez mentioned an experiment in which participants were shown a close-up picture of a man’s face, which was bright red with his mouth open in a scream. Based on this alone, most participants said the man was extremely angry. Then the whole picture was shown. It was a football player with his arms outstretched, celebrating a goal. His angry-looking face was, in fact, a show of pure joy.
Given that people cannot guess each other’s emotional states most of the time, Dr Martinez sees no reason computers would be able to. “There are companies right now claiming to be able to do that and apply this to places I find really scary and dangerous, for example, in hiring people,” he says. “Some companies require you to present a video resume, which is analyzed by a machine-learning system. And depending on your facial expressions, they hire you or not, which I find really shocking.”
1. We can learn from the second paragraph that __________.| A．facial expressions are universal across cultures |
| B．it is hard to recognize some facial expressions |
| C．emotions and facial expressions may not be related |
| D．common facial expressions convey similar meanings |
| A．similar interest | B．fierce anger | C．strong support | D．great doubt |
| A．facial expression is an important way to communicate |
| B．machine recognition of emotion is not reliable at all |
| C．facial expression is not the only way to detect feelings |
| D．people may misread facial expressions for lack of context |
| A．Facial expressions are among the most universal forms of body language. |
| B．Computers can detect people’s mind by analyzing their facial expressions. |
| C．Facial expressions may not be the reliable reflection of a person’s emotions. |
| D．Companies can depend on machine recognition of emotion to hire people. |
2 . About 18 months ago, my father was in the hospital recovering from a major lung operation. My mother had recently passed away, and my father had taken the loss of his partner of 55 years very hard and had lost interest in life.
Trying to get him to eat each day was quite a chore as he didn’t want anything. The one thing, however, that he would ask us to bring him was ice-cream.
One evening to our surprise, he refused to eat the ice-cream, so I placed it in a staff room freezer. A little while later, my son decided he wanted it, so I fetched it for him.
As I passed another ward, a woman asked, “Are there more? Where that came from?” When I explained the situation, she apologized. She then said that she had cancer and could eat very little other than the occasional ice-cream.
The next evening, I decided to buy two ice-cream. On the way to Dad’s room, I stopped in at the sick woman’s room, and offered her the ice-cream I’d bought for her. She was totally stunned that I had thought of her, and accepted the gift with tears in her eyes. I spoke with her for a few minutes, explaining what was happening in my family and listened to her similar story of pain and suffering. It was apparent that she did not have many visitors, and the ice-cream and our short chat meant a great deal to her.
I repeated the gesture a few days later, and this time was rewarded with a huge hug.
I never even thought to ask her name, and never saw her again, but it made me realize that an act of kindness can be more rewarding when you give it, rather than receive it.
1. The writer’s father stayed in the hospital because________.| A．he had trouble eating | B．he had had a lung operation |
| C．he had lost interest in life | D．he was ill for losing his wife |
| A．ice-cream was among the little food she could eat |
| B．they had similar family experiences |
| C．she was lonely without family around |
| D．to give is as important as to receive |
| A．body language | B．word |
| C．action | D．decision |
| A．Giving is rewarding. |
| B．Don’t hesitate to help elderly people. |
| C．It’s our responsibility to look after our parents. |
| D．Never put of anything you can do till tomorrow. |
3 . A gaming company in New Zealand is luring employees. from around the world by offering unlimited paid annual leave, a share in the company’s profits and no set work hours.
Dean Hall became famous in international gaming circles for being the lead designer on popular video game DayZ. After searching the world for a location for his new gaming studio, Rocketwerkz, New Zealander Hall settled on the small university town of Dunedin on the south island’s east coast, where land is cheap and creative start-ups have become an important pan of the city’s identity.
Rocketwerkz’s flexible work culture is now drawing talent from around the globe, with Hall receiving 300 messages of inquiry since a local newspaper wrote about his studio last week.
Last year, when the company was still in its infancy(婴儿期), baby cats would also make a regular appearance in the office as a form of fighting stress, and Friday afternoons are generally reserved for sports and games to end the week on a playful note.
“The first time I heard about the idea of unlimited paid leave in places like Silicon Valley it was about the problems it caused. A culture had appeared where employees took no leave,” said Hall.
“So to address that, our staff are issued the standard New Zealand annual leave of four weeks, but they can also take unlimited leave in addition to that.”
Emily Lampitt, from Britain, is a 3D junior artist who has been with the company for a year and a half. She says the flexible work culture was a huge factor in her decision to move to New Zealand.
“The flexibility here has made me feel much more relaxed” she says. I “That internal stress I used to feel in a traditional work environment has gone, so when I am at work now it is because I want to be, because I am passionate(有激情的), not because I am afraid of my boss or watching the clock.”
1. The underlined word “luring” in Paragraph I is closest in meaning to .| A．cheating | B．disturbing |
| C．inspiring | D．attracting |
| A．To show the company focuses on pressure relief. |
| B．To explain how the company motivates its staff. |
| C．To stress the significance of harmony in workplaces. |
| D．To introduce a new way to promote creativity |
| A．set a good example to Rochetwerkz. |
| B．didn’t work out as expected. |
| C．helped develop the local culture. |
| D．solved the problem of unemployment. |
| A．To encourage companies to be more flexible. |
| B．To describe what a creative company should be like. |
| C．To give a report on the flexible management of a company. |
| D．To discuss how to make a traditional company more competitive. |
