阅读真题补丁【925】

READING PASSAGE20003s3

You should spend about20minutes on Question28-40,which are based on Reading Passage3on the following pages.

Multitasking Debate

Can you do them at the same time?

A.Talking on the phone while driving isn’t the only situation where

we’re worse at multitasking than we might like to think we are.New

studies have identified a bottleneck in our brains that some say

means we are fundamentally incapable of true multitasking If experimental findings reflect real-world performance,Practice

might improve your performance,but you will never be as good as

when focusing on one task at a time.

B.The problem,according to RenéMarois,a psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville,Tennessee,is that there’s a sticking point in the brain.To demonstrate this,Marois devised an experiment to locate it.Volunteers watch a screen and when a particular image appears,a red circle,say,they have to press a key with their index finger.Different coloured circles require presses from different fingers.Typical response time is about half a second,and the volunteers quickly reach their peak performance.Then they learn to listen to different recordings and respond by making a specific sound.

C.The trouble comes when Marois shows the volunteers an image,then almost immediately plays them a sound.Now they’re flummoxed.“If you show an image and play a sound at the same time,one task is postponed,”he says.In fact,if the second task is introduced within the half-second or so it takes to process and react to the first,it will simply be delayed until the first one is done.The largest dual-task delays occur when the two tasks are presented simultaneously;delays progressively shorten as the interval between presenting the tasks lengthens.

D.There are at least three points where we seem to get stuck,says Marois.The first is in simply identifying what we’re looking at.This can take a few tenths of a second,during which time we are not able to see and recognise a second item. This limitation is known as the“attentional blink”:experiments have shown that if you’re watching out for a particular event and a second one shows up unexpectedly any time within this crucial window of concentration,it may register in your visual cortex but you will be unable to act upon it.Interestingly,if you don’t expect the first event,you have no trouble responding to the second.What exactly causes the attentional blink is still a matter for debate.

E.A second limitation is in our short-term visual memory.It’s estimated that we can keep track of about four items at a time,fewer if they are complex.This capacity shortage is thought to explain,in part,our astonishing inability to detect even huge changes in scenes that are otherwise identical,so-called“change blindness”.Show people pairs of near-identical photos–say,aircraft engines in one picture have disappeared in the other–and they will fail to spot the differences.Here again,though,there is disagreement about what the essential limiting factor really is.Does it come down to a dearth of storage capacity,or is it about how much attention a viewer is paying?

F.A third limitation is that choosing a response to a stimulus–braking when you see a child in the road,for instance,or replying when your mother tells you over the phone that she’s thinking of leaving your dad–also takes brainpower. Selecting a response to one of these things will delay by some tenths of a second your ability to respond to the other.This is called the“response selection bottleneck”theory,first proposed in1952.

G.But David Meyer,a psychologist at the University of Michigan,Ann Arbor, doesn’t buy the bottleneck idea.He thinks dual-task interference is just evidence of a strategy used by the brain to prioritise multiple activities.Meyer is known as something of an optimist by his peers.He has written papers with titles like “Virtually perfect time-sharing in dualtask performance:Uncorking the central cognitive bottleneck”.His experiments have shown that with enough practice–at least2000tries–some people can execute two tasks simultaneously as competently as if they were doing them one after the other.He suggests that there is a central cognitive processor that coordinates all this and,what’s more, he thinks it uses discretion:sometimes it chooses to delay one task while completing another.

H.Marois agrees that practice can sometimes erase interference effects.He has found that with just1hour of practice each day for two weeks,volunteers show a huge improvement at managing both his tasks at once.Where he disagrees with Meyer is in what the brain is doing to achieve this.Marois speculates that practice might give us the chance to find less congested circuits to execute a task–rather like finding trusty back streets to avoid heavy traffic on main roads–effectively making our response to the task subconscious.

I.It probably comes as no surprise that,generally speaking,we get worse at multitasking as we age.According to Art Kramer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,who studies how aging affects our cognitive abilities,we peak in our20s.In one study,he and his colleagues had both young and old participants do a simulated driving task while carrying on a conversation.He found that while young drivers tended to miss background changes,older drivers failed to notice things that were highly relevant.Likewise,older subjects had more trouble paying attention to the more important parts of a scene than young drivers.

J.It’s not all bad news for over-55s,though.Kramer also found that older people can benefit from practice.Not only did they learn to perform better,brain scans showed that underlying that improvement was a change in the way their brains become active.While it’s clear that practice can often make a difference, especially as we age,the basic facts remain sobering.“We have this impression of an almighty complex brain,”says Marois,“and yet we have very humbling and crippling limits.”For most of our history,we probably never needed to do more than one thing at a time,he says,and so we haven’t evolved to be able to. Perhaps we will in future,though.We might yet look back one day on people like Debbie and Alun as ancestors of a new breed of true multitaskers.

Questions28-32

The reading Passage has ten paragraphs A-J.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-J,in boxes28-32on your answer sheet.

28A theory explained delay happens when selecting one reaction.

29Different age group responds to important things differently.

30Conflicts happened when visual and audio element emerge simultaneously. 31An experiment designed to demonstrate blocks for multitasking.

32A viewpoint favors optimistic side of multitask performance.

Questions33-35

Choose the correct letter,A,B,C or D.

Write your answers in boxes33-35on your answer sheet.

33Which one is correct about experiment conducted by RenéMarois?

A Participants performed poorly on listening task solely.

B Volunteers press different key on different color.

C Participants need to use different fingers on different colored object.

D They did a better job on Mixed image and sound information.

34Which statement is correct about the first limitation of Marois's experiment?

A“Attentional blink”takes about ten seconds.

B Lag occurs if we concentrate on one object while second one appears.

C We always have trouble in reacting the second one.

D First limitation can be avoid by certain measures.

35Which one is NOT correct about Meyer's experiments and statements?

A People can execute dual-task just after several attempts.

B Practice can overcome dual-task interference.

C Meyer holds a different opinion on Marois's theory.

D An existing processor decides whether delay another task or not.

Questions36-40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes36-40on your answer sheet,write

YES if the statement is true

NO if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

36Longer gap between two presenting tasks means shorter delay toward the second one.

37People tend to ignore the differences when presented two similar images.

38Marois has different opinion on the claim that training removes bottleneck effect.

39Multitasking performance has correlation with gender according to Art Kramer. 40Author doesn't believe that practice could bring any variation.

READING PASSAGE20004s2

You should spend about20minutes on Question14-26,which are based on Reading Passage2on the following pages.

Quantitative Research In Education

A The first area of criticism concerns the extent to which the results of‘scientific’

educational research are valid.Piaget carried out a number of experiments on the

basis of which he developed the idea that children go through different stages of

development,and that only when they have reached the

necessary stage of development can they carry out the most

advanced forms of cognitive operation.A famous experiment of

his required children to compare the amount of liquid held by

different shaped containers.The containers had the same

capacity,and even when young children were shown that the same amount of liquid could be poured between the two containers,many claimed that one was larger than the other.Piaget’s interpretation of this was that the children were unable to perform the logical task involved in recognizing that the two containers,while different in shape,were the same in capacity:this being because their cognitive development had not reached the necessary stage Critics of his work have questioned this

conclusion,for instance,Donaldson.They raise the possibility that the children were simply unwilling to play experimenter’s game,or that the children misunderstood what the experimenter was asking.These criticisms point to the fact obvious enough, but important in its implications that experiments are social situations in which

interpersonal interactions take place.

B Similar criticisms have been applied to psychological and educational tests.For

example,Mehan points out how test questions may be interpreted in ways different from those intended by the researcher:In all language development test,children are presented with a picture of a medieval https://www.wendangku.net/doc/7a17395138.html,plete with moat,drawbridge,and parapets.and three initial consonants:D,C,and G.The child is supposed to circle the correct initial consonant,C for’castle’is correct,but many children choose D.

After the test,when I asked those children what the name of the building was,they responded’Disneyland’.These children used the same line of reasoning intended by the tester,but they arrived at the wrong substantive answer.The score sheet showing

a wrong answer does not document a child’s lack of reasoning ability;it only

documents that the child indicated an answer different from the one the tester

expected.

C Here we have questions being raised about the validity of the sort of measurements

on which the findings of quantitative research are typically based.Some,including for example Donaldson,regard these as technical problems that can be overcome by more rigorous experimentation.Others,however,including Mehan,believe them to

be not simply problems with particular experiments or tests,but serious threats to validity that potentially affect all research of this kind.

D At the same time questions have also been raised about the assumption built into the

‘logic’of quantitative educational research that causes can be identified by physical and/or statistical manipulation of variables.Critics suggest that this fails to take

account of the very nature of human social life.Social life,it is suggested,is much more contextually variable and complex.

E Such criticisms of quantitative educational research have been the stimulus for an

increasing number of education researchers,over the past thirty or forty years,to

adopt more qualitative approaches.These researchers have generally rejected

attempts to measure and control variables experimentally or statistically.

F Qualitative research(定性研究)can take many forms.Loosely indicated by such

terms as‘ethnography’,‘case study’,‘participant observation’,‘life history’,

‘unstructured interviewing’,‘discourse analysis’,etc.In general,though,it has the following characteristics:A strong emphasis on exploring the nature of particular

educational phenomena,rather than setting out to test hypotheses about them.A

tendency to work with‘unstructured data’:that is,data that have not been coded at the point of collection in terms of a closed set of analytical categories.When

engaging in observation,qualitative researchers therefore audio-or video-record what happens or write detailed open-ended field-notes,rather than coding behaviour in terms of a predefined set of categories,as would a quantitative researcher employing ‘systematic observation’.Similarly,when interviewing,open-ended questions will be asked rather than questions requiring predefined answers of the kind typical,for

example,of postal questionnaires.In fact,qualitative interviews are often designed to be close in character to casual conversations.

G Typically,a small number of cases will be investigated in detail,rather than any

attempt being made to cover a large number,as would be the case in most

quantitative research,such as systematic observational studies or social surveys.The analysis of the data involves explicit interpretations of the meanings and functions of human actions,and mainly takes the form of verbal descriptions and explanations.

Quantification and statistical analysis play a subordinate role at most.The two areas of educational research where criticism of quantitative research and the development of qualitative approaches initially emerged most strongly where the sociology of

education and evaluation studies.The trend towards qualitative research in the

sociology of education began in the UK in the1960s with studies of a boys’

grammar school,a boys’secondary modern school,and girls’grammar school by Lacey,Hargreaves and Lambart.They employed an ethnographic or participant

observation approach,though they also collected some quantitative data on,for

example,friendship patterns among the pupils.The researchers observed lessons, interviewed teachers and pupils,and drew on school records.They studied the

schools for relatively long periods,spending many months collecting data and

tracing changes over time.

Questions14-17

Look at the following statements(Question14-17)and the list of people below. Match each statement with the correct person,A-G.

Write the correct letter,A-G,in boxes14-17on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

A Piaget

B Mehan

C Donaldson

14A wrong answer indicates more of a child’s different perspective than incompetence in reasoning.

15Logical reasoning involving in the experiments is beyond children’s cognitive development.

16Children’s reluctance to comply with game rules or miscommunication may lie in another explanation.

17Kinds of experiments or test are flawed essentially and will not justify by a more rigorous approach.

Questions18-21

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes18-21on your answer sheet.

Quantitative research in education has sparked debate that whether it is__18___ in scientific area.Piaget’s experiment involved on children’s steps on development,which used equal amount of__19___in a couple of containers,to test if student would be able to judge the their size.Another quantitative research,which involved language development exams,was carried out by

__20__,he showed children a__21___,and then requested children to make answers,but ultimately most of them failed.In1960s,another method emerged along with quantitative research,__22___in the UK were taken as experiment sites in application of the combined approach.

Questions23-25

Choose THREE correct statements of“Quanlitative research”features below Write the correct letters in boxes23-25on your answer sheet.

A Work with well-organised data in a closed set of analytical categories.

B Record researching situations and apply note taking.

C Design the interview to be in an atmosphere like easy conversation.

D Questionnaires full with loads of data instead of details.

E Questionnaires requiring open-ended answers.

F Code behaviour in terms of a predefined set of categories.

Questions26

Choose the correct letter,A,B,C or D

Write the correct letter in box26on your answer sheet.

26What is the main idea of this passage?

A to educate children that quantitative research are most applicable

B to illustrate the society lack of deep comprehension of educational

approach

C to explain ideas and characteristics of quantitative research and qualitative

research.

D to imply that qualitative research is flawless method compared with

quantitative one

READING PASSAGE1328s2

READING PASSAGE1318s2

READING PASSAGE1346s1

雅思阅读预测真题库4参考答案

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