A new study has found some secrets of people’...

A new study has found some secrets of people’s understanding of large numbers.

Researchers studied a group of people who were born deaf and never learned any spoken language or a formal sign language, but they have developed a gesture system to communicate with people around them. The gestures let them express approximate amounts, but not exact numbers.

“Up to three, they’re fine,” says Elizabet Spaepen, a researcher at the University of Chicago and an author of the study. “But past three, they start to fall apart.” In one test, Spaepen would knock her fist against a study participant’s fist a certain number of times and then ask them to respond with the same number of knocks. “If I were to knock four times on their fist, they might knock on my fist five times,” she says.

The finding offers a clue to just how much language affects our understanding of numbers. That has been a big question since 2004, when other researchers published data on two tribes in the Amazon whose members also lack words for big numbers. “What they have are words that mean one and two,” Spaepen says, “and then they have a word to mean many.”

Members of the Amazonian tribes also had trouble matching numbers larger than three or four. But some scholars felt that these earlier studies failed to prove that language was the reason. They pointed out that the tribes lived in groups that didn’t use money and had no need for exact numbers.

The new research appears to answer that criticism. “It proves that the kinds of problems in understanding numbers that we found in the Amazonian tribes are not due to just the cultural or environmental circumstances,” says Peter Gordon of Columbia University, one of the researchers involved in the earlier studies.

1.The participants of the new study ______.

A. cannot communicate with one another

B. use a formal sign language to express numbers

C. have some physical disability

D. come from a distant tribe

2. According to the passage, the new study _______.

A. ignored the cultural influence on the participants

B. is doubted by many people

C. has found it is harder to learn numbers than learning a sign language

D. has shown that our understanding of numbers is influenced by our mastering of language.

3. The tribes involved in earlier studies _________.

A. often dealt with big numbers.

B. didn’t use money in their daily life

C. didn’t have their own language

D. often made trouble for the researchers

4. What can we learn from the last paragraph?

A. Peter Gordon is a researcher of the University of Chicago.

B. Peter Gordon thinks less of the new study than his earlier studies.

C. Peter Gordon believes people’s understanding of numbers has nothing to do with cultural circumstances.

D. Peter Gordon is in favor of the finding of the new study.

5.In which part of a newspaper would you most probably find this passage?

A. Science　　　　　　　 B. Health

C. Politics　　　　　　 D. Lifestyle

高二英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析

A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth．

Until now，it has been widely assumed that the kind of mental ability that allows us to solve new problems without having any relevant previous experience—what psychologists call fluid intelligence—is innate and cannot be taught（though people can raise their grades on tests of it by practicing）．

But in the new study，researchers describe a method for improving this skill，along with experiments to prove it works．

The key, researchers found, was carefully structured training in working memory—the kind that allows memorization of a telephone number just long enough to dial it．This type of memory is closely related to fluid intelligence，so the researchers reasoned that improving it might lead to improvements in fluid intelligence．

First they measured fluid intelligence of volunteers using standard tests．Then they trained each in a complicated memory task—the child’s card game，in which they had to recall a card they saw and heard．During the course, they needed to ignore irrelevant items, monitor ongoing performance，manage two tasks at the same time and connect related items to one another in space and time．

The four groups experienced a half-hour of training daily for 8, 12, 17 and 19 days, respectively．To make sure they were not just improving their test-taking skills，the researchers compared them with control groups that took the tests without the training．

The results, published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences，were striking．Improvement in the trained groups was a lot greater．Moreover，the longer they trained, the higher their scores were．All performers，from the weakest to the strongest，showed significant improvement．

“Our results show you can increase your intelligence with proper training．” said Dr Jaeggi, a co-author of the paper．“No one knows how long the gains will last after training stops,” he added, “and the experiment’s design did not allow the researchers to determine whether more training would continue to produce further gains．

1.By writing the article，the writer intends to ______________．

A. inform the readers of a new study

B. call on people to be trained to increase intelligence

C. prove one’s born brainpower can be improved

D. tell people the improved intelligence will last forever

2.The researchers thought the key to improving the intelligence was ______________．

A. memorizing telephone numbers　　　

B .improving working memory

C. training in concentration　　　　　　　

D. recalling a card

3.The following aspects of the training help increase intelligence EXCEPT___________．

A. ignoring irrelevant items　　　　　　　　

B.monitoring ongoing performance

C.managing two tasks at the same time　　

D.using previous experience

4.When the experiment was conducted, the researchers______________．

A.trained the four groups for the same period of time

B.only made comparisons between the four groups

C.compared the four groups with control groups

D.trained the four groups together

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth．

Until now，it has been widely assumed that the kind of mental ability that allows us to solve new problems without having any relevant previous experience—what psychologists call fluid intelligence—is innate and cannot be taught（though people can raise their grades on tests of it by practicing）．

But in the new study，researchers describe a method for improving this skill，along with experiments to prove it works．

The key, researchers found, was carefully structured training in working memory—the kind that allows memorization of a telephone number just long enough to dial it．This type of memory is closely related to fluid intelligence，so the researchers reasoned that improving it might lead to improvements in fluid intelligence．

First they measured fluid intelligence of volunteers using standard tests．Then they trained each in a complicated memory task—the child’s card game，in which they had to recall a card they saw and heard．During the course, they needed to ignore irrelevant items, monitor ongoing performance，manage two tasks at the same time and connect related items to one another in space and time．

The four groups experienced a half-hour of training daily for 8, 12, 17 and 19 days, respectively．To make sure they were not just improving their test-taking skills，the researchers compared them with control groups that took the tests without the training．

The results, published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences，were striking．Improvement in the trained groups was a lot greater．Moreover，the longer they trained, the higher their scores were．All performers，from the weakest to the strongest，showed significant improvement．

“Our results show you can increase your intelligence with proper training．” said Dr Jaeggi, a co-author of the paper．“No one knows how long the gains will last after training stops,” he added, “and the experiment’s design did not allow the researchers to determine whether more training would continue to produce further gains．”

1..The researchers thought the key to improving the intelligence was ______________．

A.memorizing telephone numbers        B.improving working memory

C.training in concentration                             D.recalling a card

2..The following aspects of the training help increase intelligence EXCEPT___________．

A.ignoring irrelevant items                             B.monitoring ongoing performance

C.managing two tasks at the same time                   D.using previous experience

3..When the experiment was conducted, the researchers______________．

A.trained the four groups for the same period of time

B.only made comparisons between the four groups

C.compared the four groups with control groups

D.trained the four groups together

4..By writing the article，the writer intends to ______________．

A.inform the readers of a new study

B.call on people to be trained to increase intelligence

C.prove one’s born brainpower can be improved

D.tell people the improved intelligence will last forever

高二英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析

A new study has found evidence of aggressive (攻击性的) behavior in children who drink four or more servings of soft drinks every day. Information for the study came from the mothers of 3,000 5-year-olds. Researchers asked the women to keep a record of how many servings of soft drinks their children drank over a two-month period. They were also asked to complete a checklist of their children’s behavior.

The researchers have found that 43 percent of the children drink at least one daily serving of soda, and 4 percent of the youngsters have even four or more sodas to drink every day.

Shakira Suglia, a famous expert, says they’ve found that children who drink the most soda are more than twice as likely as those who drink no soda to show signs of aggression.

“For the children who consume four or more soft drinks per day, we see more withdrawn behaviors, which make them hard to get along well with others.”

The aggressive behaviors include destroying possessions belonging to others, taking part in fights and physically attacking people.

The researchers have determined the link after considering factors like the child’s age and sex. They have also considered other possible influence, such as whether the boys and girls are eating sweets or giving fruit drinks on a normal day. In addition, the researchers have examined parenting styles and other social conditions that may be taking place in the home.

Researches are trying to find why young children who drink a lot of soda have behavior problems. An ingredient often found in soft drinks is caffeine, which helps to make people feel energetic. Doctor Suglia suggests that caffeine could cause the 5-year-olds to be more aggressive. Earlier studies of adults have found the highest sugar levels in those who carry weapons (武器) and show signs of negative social behavior.

1.What section of a newspaper is the passage probably taken from?

A. Scientific Technology     B. Science Fictions　 C. Social News D. Health Report

2.The underlined word “withdrawn” in paragraph 4 can probably be replaced by the word ______.

A. backward            B. unsocial            C. generous        D. friendly

3. Researchers studied the following aspects of the children except ______.

A. age                B. sex                C. games            D. parents

4.According to the research, which of the following is right?

A. Mothers were asked to keep a record of how many servings of soft drinks their children drank over a three-month period.

B. 4 percent of the youngsters have even four or fewer sodas to drink every day.

C. Children who drink no soda show fewer aggressive behaviors.

D. Children with the highest sugar levels tend to carry weapons and show signs of negative social behavior.

5.After a further study on ingredients in soda, Shakira Suglia implies that the direct cause of the aggressive behaviors may be ______.

A. soft drinks        B. attention problems     C. caffeine    D. social conditions

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

A new study has found the amount of antibiotics（抗生素）given to farm animals is expected to increase by two-thirds over the next 15 years. Researchers are linking the growing dependence on the drugs to the increasing need for meat, milk and eggs. However, the drugs could quicken the development of antibiotic-resistant infections（感染）. Such infections are already a major public, health concern in the United States.

The World Health Organization notes when people stop living in poverty（贫困）, the first thing they want to do is eat better, rather than earn more money. For most people, that means their diet should contain more meat. With the rapid development of Asia, people there are eating nearly four times as much meat, milk and other milk products as they did 50 year ago.

To meet the need, farmers have put many animals into smaller spaces. As the animals are crowded together, the easiest way to deal with some of the problems of crowding is to give them antibiotics. It's clear that antibiotics help animals stay healthy in a crowded environment and grow faster. But bacteria can develop resistance to the drugs gradually.

Nowadays, doctors find antibiotics that once worked against the infections no longer work. The bacteria have learned ways to fight against the drugs. The heavy use of antibiotics in animals is responsible for the growth of antibiotic resistance worldwide. In the United States, at least two million people get drug-resistant infections each year and at least 23,000 die from an infection.

Europe has banned the use of antibiotics to increase animal growth. And the United States is hoping to persuade farmers to stop using antibiotics for that purpose.

1.What accounts for the increasing amount of antibiotics given to farm animals?

A.The desire for new drugs. B.The less effective antibiotics.

C.The outdated farm technology. D.The need for more various foods.

2.What do most people want to do first when they get rid of poverty according to the WHO?

A.Making a lot of money. B.Focusing more on health.

C.Having more meat in their diet. D.Living in a better environment.

3.What can be inferred from the passage?

A.Antibiotics do harm to animals.

B.Antibiotics help animals stay healthy.

C.Antibiotics are used heavily in Europe.

D.Antibiotic-resistant bacteria spread to people.

4.What's the passage mainly about?

A.A new way of raising farm animals.

B.The advantages of using antibiotics.

C.The reason for banning the use of antibiotics.

D.The negative effect of antibiotics in farm animals.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

An author who surveyed 600 millionaires has claimed that she found the secrets of getting rich. Sarah Stanley Fallaw, the author of The Next Millionaire Next Door: Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth, got her findings after she surveyed American millionaires in 2015 and 2016. The book is a follow-up to her father’s research in the 1998 bestseller The Millionaire Next Door, which Thomas J. Stanley wrote with William D. Danko.

Stanley Fallaw argues that resilience（抗逆力）in the face of refusal and strict goal setting are important to building wealth. “To build wealth, to build one’s own business, to ignore critics and media and neighbors, you must have the ambition to keep pursuing your goals past refusal and pain,” wrote Stanley Fallaw in the new book, according to Business Insider. She added, “Millionaires and other economically successful Americans who decide to climb the corporate ladder（企业晋升制度）, or struggle to create a financial independence lifestyle early do so by pushing on without stop.”

Stanley Fallaw stresses the importance of setting goals and sticking to them, especially for budgeting. She says that living modestly even as your income grows will allow you to devote a greater percentage of your income towards savings and building wealth. “Most millionaires we interviewed stressed the great freedom that comes from spending below their means,” Stanley Fallaw writes.

The author says that the temptation（诱惑）to keep up with the spending habits of the people around can be highly harmful to building wealth. Particularly in the age of social media, when lavish（浪费的）vacations and new purchases are broadcast for the world to see, the perseverance（坚持）to live thriftily（节俭地）is important, Stanley Fallaw argues.

1.What was Sarah Stanley Fallaw’s book based on?

A.Her own life experiences.

B.Surveys on the American millionaires.

C.Her father’s book The Millionaire Next Door.

D.Her father’s partner William D. Danko’s advice.

2.Which is NOT the important quality for building wealth according to Stanley Fallaw?

A.Listening to others’ critics. B.Persevering through failure.

C.Sticking to your goals. D.Living a thrift life.

3.What is harmful for people to build wealth?

A.To live thriftily.

B.To follow others’ spending habits.

C.To avoid the temptation of new purchases.

D.To keep away from lavish vacations.

4.What is the best title of the passage?

A.What People Should Read B.Why We Need Strict Goals

C.How Millionaires Get Rich D.When People Will Become Millionaires

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Mothers can still offer comfort, even from a distance, a new study has found. The results show that simply hearing their mothers’ voice over the phone works just as well at calming the nerves of stressed children as a real-life pat on the shoulder.

The soothing（抚慰的）effect is most likely due to the release of the hormone（荷尔蒙）, oxytocin（催生素）, in the brain, the researchers say. This “love hormone” is known to quell stress and is likely to be involved in social connections, including those between a mother and a child.

Previous work has revealed that this hormone is released during physical contact with a mother. “But it’s clear from these results that a mother’s voice can have the same effect as a hug, even if she isn’t actually standing there,” said the researcher, Leslie Seltzer, a biological scientist.

Seltzer tested a group of 61 girls, aged 7 to 12, by having them make an unprepared speech and solve a series of maths problems in front of a group of strangers, sending their hearts racing and levels of cortisol—a hormone associated with stress—soaring.

Facing a challenge like that raises stress levels of a lot of people. Once stressed, a third of the girls were comforted in person by their mothers with hugs. A third of the girls watched an emotionally neutral 75-minute video. The rest were handed a telephone with their mothers on the line.

For the girls who interacted in person or over the phone with their mothers, the levels of the “love hormone” rose significantly, and the stress-marking hormone was washed away. This effect didn’t show up for participants who watched the video.

Seltzer is now testing the amount of oxytocin released with other communication methods—like text messaging—and hopes to see the research spread out from human subjects. “It’s not just us, of course. Lots of very social species have voices,” she said. “on the one hand, we are curious to see if this effect is unique to humans. On the other, we’re hoping researchers who study vocal communication will consider looking at oxytocin release in other animals and apply it to broader questions of social behavior and evolutionary biology.

1.Mothers’ voice over the phone can reduce children’s nerves according to the study, because ________.

2.The underlined word “quell” in the second paragraph probably means “________”.

3. From the study, we know that ________.

4.From the last paragraph, we can conclude that ________.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Researchers at San Diego Zoo have been studying what has been described as the “secret language” of elephants. They have been monitoring（监测） communications between animals that cannot be heard by human ears.

The elephant’s call will be familiar to most people, but the animals also give out growls (低吼). Their growls, however, are only partly audible (听得见的); two-thirds of the call is at frequencies that are too low to be picked up by our hearing. To learn more about the inaudible part of the growl, the team attached (附在……上面) a microphone sensitive to these low frequencies and a GPS tracking system to eight of the zoo’s female elephants. The researchers could then relate the noises the animals were making to what they were doing. Matt Anderson, who led the project, told BBC News, “We’re excited to learn how they interact and contact with one another.”

The team has already learned that pregnant females use this low frequency communication to announce to the rest of their long gestation (妊娠期) of over two years, in the last 12 days we see the low part of the growl, which we can’t hear. This we believe is to announce to the rest of the herd that the baby is upcoming,” said Dr Anderson.

The researchers believe that this also warns the elephants to look out for coming danger. “You may think that a baby calf of about 300 pounds would not be as open to predation (捕食) as other species,” he says. “But packs of hyenas (袋狼) are a big threat in the wild.”

Female elephants are only in season for around four days every four years and these calls can be heard by males more than two miles away.

1.Why some elephants’ call is called “secret language”?

A．Because it can’t be heard by human ears.

B．Because it can only be heard by female elephants.

C．Because people don’t know its meanings.

D．Because people haven’t studied it completely.

2.By using a sensitive microphone and a GPS tracking system, the researchers wanted to find out.

A．where the elephants usually go

B．what the elephants’ growls really mean

C．how mother elephants raise baby calves

D．how elephants protect their babies.

3.A pregnant elephant uses inaudible growls to________.

A．show the location where she is staying

B．ask for help when she losses her way

C．scare away the enemy

D．let others know she will have a baby

4.What is the passage mainly about?

A．The elephants can speak like people.

B．The wild elephants’ ways to fight against enemies.

C．The “secret language” between elephants.

D．The special life of female elephants.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容(1个单词)或括号内单词的正确形式。

A new study has found that graduate students are six times more likely to show depression symptoms 1. the general population. Researchers led by Evans, a scientist, surveyed 2,279 students in 26 different 2. (country). Approximately 40% of the surveyed graduates scored middle 3. severe for anxiety. Nearly 40 percent of the surveyed graduates also showed signs of middle to severe depression. It’s not hard 4. (understand) why life as a master student can drive some people crazy. Long hours in researching, social loneliness and feelings of not being respected 5. (complete) can break even the most motivated persons among us. When this situation persists, the anxiety and depression can become part of their life. The relationship 6. their teachers is another aspect 7. can deeply influence a graduate student’s mental health. Among the graduates with anxiety or depression, only half agreed that their professional teachers 8. (provide) real help. These unbelievable high rates of anxiety and depression, when 9. (compare) to the general population, are alarming and should serve as 10. wakeup call for the academic world, expert Evans says.

高二英语语法填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

Have you ever wondered why certain people always say they are lucky? Some people say the secret of being born lucky is probably a summer birthday. May babies are the most likely to enjoy a lifetime of good fortune, a study of 40,000 people has found. The time of year you are born has a lasting influence on optimism and whether people think they are lucky, British and Swedish scientists said. May is the luckiest month to be born in, with half of those born then considering themselves lucky. October is the least lucky month with only 43 percent claiming good fortune.

The study adds to evidence that luck is not all down to chance, but is also affected by a person’s attitude. Another research has shown that whether people think themselves lucky depends more on having a “glass half-full” (instead of “half-empty”) approach to life, than on success. Professor Richard Wiseman, who led the study, said, “Something is influencing how people feel about their luck. People create their own luck through their attitude towards life.”

Luck is a mental state and not a matter of blind chance. There could be two reasons why those born in spring and summer reported themselves luckier than those born in autumn or winter. “One theory is that the temperature at the time of birth might be helpful to the development of the brain.” He said. “People born in winter are more likely to suffer from depression”. He said another possible reason is that mothers may be in a bad mood during winter, which influences their babies. The researchers said their findings were based on statistics only, and would not be true for everyone.

What’s depression? Medical depression is when one feels so sad and hopeless that sometimes he can’t imagine being happy. The pain becomes so deep that you don’t feel like participating in life. People who are permanently depressed usually have physical problems like stomachaches, headaches, and lack of energy. As you probably know, some people experience such deep depression that they believe suicide (killing yourself) is the only way to escape their pain.

1.Why can your birthday influence your attitude towards life?

A. The time of your birthday determines how fortunate you will be.

B. Mothers may feel differently in different seasons, and their moods influence their babies.

C. How successful you will be lies in the hour of your birthday.

D. How you feel about your health is influenced by the time of your birthday.

2.Having a “half-full” approach to life is a (an) ______ attitude.

A. optimistic　　 B. pessimistic　　 C. lucky　　 D. depressing

3.Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

A. People born in summer are probably more optimistic than those born in winter.

B. A person’s luck may be affected by his attitude.

C. Depression may harm one’s physical health.

D. Luck is never a matter of chance.

4.According to the research result, one’s luck mainly depends on ______.

A. chance　　 B. the month to be born in

C. one’s attitude to life　　 D. health state

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析