大学六级考试阅读专项训练5篇.docx

1、大学六级考试阅读专项训练5篇Passage 1Reading Babys MindThe helpless, seemingly awkward infant staring up at you from his little bed, has a lot more going on inside his head than you ever imagined. A wealth of new research is leading child psychologists to rethink their long-held beliefs about the emotional and in

2、tellectual abilities of even very young babies. Science is now giving us a much different picture of what goes on inside their hearts and heads. Long before they form their first words or attempt the feat of sitting up, they are already mastering complex emotions-jealousy, empathy (移情), frustration-

3、that were once thought to be learned much later. A New Baby Research Little Victoria Bateman is blue-eyed and as cute a baby as there ever was. At 6 months, she is also trusting and unsuspecting, which is a good thing, because otherwise shed never go along with whats about to happen. Its a sunny Jun

4、e afternoon in Lubbock, Texas, and inside the Human Sciences lab at Texas Tech University, Victorias mother is settling her daughter into a high chair, where she is the latest subject in an ongoing experiment aimed at understanding the way babies think. Sybil Hart, an associate professor of human de

5、velopment and leader of the study, trains video cameras on mother and daughter. Everything is set. Hart hands the mother, Cheryl Bateman, a childrens book, Elmo Pops In, and instructs her to engross herself in its pages. Just have a conversation with me about the book, Hart tells her. The most impor

6、tant thing is, do not look at Victoria. As the two women chat, Victoria looks around the room, feeling a little bored. After a few minutes, Hart leaves the room and returns cradling a lifelike baby doll. Dramatically, Hart places it in Cheryl Batemans arms, and tells her to embrace the doll while co

7、ntinuing to ignore Victoria. Thats OK, little baby, Bateman coos, hugging and rocking the doll. Victoria is not bored anymore. At first, she cracks her best smile. When that doesnt work, she begins kicking. But her mom pays her no mind. Thats when Victoria loses it. Soon shes crying so hard it looks

8、 like she might spit up. Hart rushes in. OK, were done, she says, and takes back the doll. Cheryl Bateman goes to comfort her daughter. Ive never seen her react like that to anything, she says. Over the last 10 months, Hart has repeated the scene hundreds of times. Its the same in nearly every case:

9、 tiny babies, overwhelmed with jealousy. Even Hart was stunned to find that infants could experience an emotion, which, until recently, was thought to be way beyond their grasp. Findings of Baby Research The new research is sure to confuse new parents-see, Junior is a genius-but its more than just a

10、n academic exercise. Armed with the new information, pediatricians (儿科医生) are starting to change the way they evaluate their youngest patients. In addition to tracking physical development, they are now focusing much more deeply on emotional advancement. The research shows how powerful emotional wel

11、l-being is to a childs future health. A baby who fails to meet certain key emotional milestones may have trouble learning to speak, read and, later, do well in school. By reading emotional responses, doctors have begun to discover ways to tell if a baby as young as 3 months is showing early signs of

12、 possible psychological disorders, including depression, anxiety, learning disabilities and perhaps autism. One of the earliest emotions that even tiny babies display is, admirably enough, empathy. In fact, concern for others may be hard-wired into babies brains. Place a newborn down next to another

13、 crying infant, and chances are, both babies will soon be wailing (悲 叹) away. People have always known that babies cry when they hear other babies cry, says Martin Hoffman, a psychology professor at New York University who did the first studies on infant empathy in the 1970s. The question was, why a

14、re they crying? Does it mean that the baby is truly concerned for his fellow human, or just annoyed by the racket? A recent study conducted in Italy, which built on Hoffmans own work, has largely settled the question. Researchers played for infants tapes of other babies crying. As predicted, that wa

15、s enough to start the tears flowing. But when researchers played babies, recordings of their own cries, they rarely began crying themselves. The verdict: there is some empathy in place, right from birth, Hoffman says. The intensity of the emotion tends to fade over time. Babies older than 6 months n

16、o longer cry but grimace (作苦相) at the discomfort of others. By 13 to 15 months, babies tend to take matters into their own hands. Theyll try to comfort a crying playmate. What I find most charming is when, even if the two mothers are present, theyll bring their own mother over to help, Hoffman says.

17、 Part of that empathy may come from another early-baby skill, the ability to discern emotions from the facial expressions of the people around them. Most textbooks still say that babies younger than 6 months dont recognize emotions, says Diane Montague, assistant professor of psychology at LaSalle U

18、niversity in Philadelphia. To put that belief to the test, Montague came up with a twist on every infants favorite game, and recruited dozens of 4-month-olds to play along. She began by peeking around a cloth with a big smile on her face. Predictably, the babies were delighted, and stared at her int

19、ently-the time-tested way to tell if a baby is interested. On the fourth peek, though, Montague emerged with a sad look on her face. This time, the response was much different. They not only looked away, she says, but wouldnt look back even when she began smiling again. Refusing to make eye contact

20、is a classic baby sign of distress. An angry face got their attention once again, but their faces showed no pleasure. They seemed primed to be alert, even vigilant, Montague says. I realize thats speculative in regard to infants. . . I think it shows that babies younger than 6 months find meaning in

21、 expressions. They are also far more sophisticated intellectually than we once believed. Babies, as young as 4 months, have advanced powers of deduction and an ability to understand the intricate patterns. They have a surprisingly visual palette(燃料，调色板), which enables them to notice small difference

22、s, especially in faces, that adults and older children lose the ability to see. Until a baby is 3 months old, he can recognize a photograph of his mother just as quickly as a photo in which everything is in the right place. Challenges and Dangers of Baby ResearchThis might be a good place to pause f

23、or a word about the challenges and dangers of baby research. Since the subjects cant speak for themselves, figuring out whats going on inside their heads is often a matter of reading their faces and body language. If this seems speculative, its not. Over decades of trial and error, researchers have

24、fine-tuned their observation skills and zeroed in on numerous consistent baby responses to various stimuli: how long they stare at an object, what they reach out for and what makes them recoil in fear or disgust can often tell experienced researchers everything they need to know. More recently, scie

25、ntists have added EEGs and laser eye tracking, which allow more precise readings. 1. The passage is mainly about those researches that focus on the emotional and intellectual abilities of those very young babies. 2. The purpose of the experiment on Victoria Bateman is to find out how important the m

26、others love is to her baby. 3. In the experiment, Victoria Bateman cried because she thought that her mother didnt love her any more. 4. Only through reading emotional responses can doctors tell whether a 3-month baby will get possible psychological disorders. 5. Pediatricians are now paying less at

27、tention to physical development of their baby patients but more to _. 6. Hoffmans study revealed that babies are born to show other crying babies _. 7. The findings of Dianes test demonstrated the babys ability to recognize_. 8. It is amazing to find that the visual palette of a baby helps him to no

28、tice _.9. As for the challenges, those researchers have to obtain those findings about babies mind by reading _. 10. In order to gain more precise readings about babies mind, scientists have adopted the skills of EEGs and _. Passage 2The Power of Personal Attitudes Each of us is made up of various p

29、hysical, vital, and mental parts. There is our physical body and its organs, muscles, etc; the vital being with its sensations, emotions and feelings, and the mental part with its thoughts, memories, reasoning power, beliefs, etc. Somewhere between our emotions and our thought processing lie our att

30、itudes - our emotional perceptions about life, about others, even towards our own selves. Attitudes generally express positively and negatively. E.g. when I have good feelings towards my work or towards others, the attitude is positive. When I feel reluctant to do certain things that are necessary,

31、or show hostility towards certain individuals, then my attitude is negative. Attitudes About Ourselves, Others, Life Though we have many attitudes about all aspects of life, if we look a little closer we can identify three basic typesthose that have to do with ourselves, those we have about others a

32、nd the objects around us, and those we have towards life itself. An example of a negative attitude about ourselves is having low self-esteem, or low self-confidence. An example of a wanting attitudes about others is a feeling ill will towards another person, or being mistrustful of others. An example of a negative attitude towards life is being pessimistic that things will never turn out well. The good news however is that if we cha