How Kids Learn
It is a big day for the "expert baby." A minivan bearing an official University of Washington seal picks up the 14-month-old boy and his mother and takes them to a Seattle day-care center. Once inside, he is placed at the head of a table surrounded by his "students," a bevy of babies his age. Researchers from the university's psychology department observe and take notes.
The miniprofessor begins his lesson: Whaaack! He smacks the top of a special camping cup with his palm, and it collapses. His pupils look at one another, wide-eyed. Then he deftly pulls apart a puzzle and puts it back together. As a finale, he hits a hidden button on a box, which produces a buzzing sound. A delighted squeal rises from the audience. Wunderkind is then whisked away.
Two days later, a researcher visits the houses of each of the young pupils, unpacking a black bag to reveal the little professor's toys. The infants grin in recognition and repeat the tricks they observed. Like the expert baby before them, they have mastered these routines. But when the researchers visit babies who haven't been primed, the results are decidedly different. Those babies bang the cup on the table, but never collapse it. They chew on the puzzle, but don't assemble it. They rub the box, but fail to find the secret button.
The expert baby and his cohorts are part of a revolution in how scientists view very young children. For most of this century, infants were regarded as gurgling blobs, soaking up sights and sounds but unable to make much use of them. But it turns out that babies are reasoning beings even in their very first months. "Before they have the ability to use language, infants can think, draw conclusions, make predictions, look for explanations, and even do miniexperiments." says Andrew Meltzoff, head of developmental psychology at the University of Washington and coauthor of The Scientist in the Crib, published this week.
In the passage, "cohorts" (in the first line of the 4th paragraph) refer to ______.
A. the toys the miniprofessor used
B. the babies taking part in the research
C. the researchers conducting the study
D. the teachers at the day-care center
Section B
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.
In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide acts rather like a one way mirror—the glass in the roof of a greenhouse which allows the sun's rays to enter but prevents the heat from escaping.
According to a weather expert's prediction, the atmosphere will be 3℃ warmer in the year 2050 than it is today, if man continues to burn fuels at the present rate. If this warming up took place, the ice caps in the poles would begin to melt, thus raising sea level several meters and severely flooding coastal cities. Also, the increase in atmospheric temperature would lead to great changes in the climate of the northern hemisphere, possibly resulting in an alteration of the earth's chief food-growing zones.
In the past, concern about a man-made warming of the earth has concentrated on the Arctic (北极) because the Antarctic (南极) is much colder and has much thicker ice sheets. But the weather experts arc now paying more attention to West Antarctic, which may be affected by only a few degrees of warming: in other words, by a warming on the scale that will possibly take place in the next fifty years from the burning of fuels.
Satellite pictures show that large areas of Antarctic ice are already disappearing. The evidence available suggests that a warming has taken place. This fits the theory that carbon dioxide warms the earth.
However, most of the fuel is burnt in the northern hemisphere, where temperatures seem to be falling. Scientists conclude, therefore, that up to now natural influences on the weather have exceeded those caused by man. The question is: Which natural cause has most effect on the weather?
One possibility is the variable behavior. of the sun. Astronomers at one research station have studied the hot spots and "cold" spots (that is, the relatively less hot spots) on the sun. As the sun rotates, every 27.5 days, it presents hotter or "colder" faces to the earth, and different aspects to different parts of the earth. This seems to have a considerable effect on the distribution of the earth's atmospheric pressure, and consequently on wind circulation. The sun is also variable over a long term: its heat output goes up and down in cycles, the latest trend being downward.
Scientists are now finding mutual relations between models of solar-weather interactions and the actual climate over many thousands of years, including the last Ice Age. The problem is that the models are predicting that the world should be entering a new Ice Age and it is not. One way of solving this theoretical difficulty is to assume a delay of thousands of years while the solar effects overcome the inertia (惯性) of the earth's climate. If this is right, the warming effect of carbon dioxide might thus be serving as a useful counter-balance to the sun's diminishing heat.
It can be concluded that a concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would ______.
A. prevent the sun's rays from reaching the earth's surface
B. mean a warming up in the climate in the Arctic hemisphere
C. account for great changes in the climate in the northern hemisphere
D. raise the temperature of the earth's surface
Every country and culture, whether it's as ancient as India or as young as the Czech Republic, has a history that will greatly affect both market and the marketer. A market that has been heavily exploited in the past by foreigners (or even colonized) will turn a predictably skeptical eye toward any overseas company seeking new sales territory. It may even refuse products that could greatly benefit the society. Understanding that history will enable a marketeer to approach the culture in a more subtle manner, and it will certainly cause an adjustment of schedule. On the other end of the spectrum, a culture that has been marked by independence for some time will have few fears of foreign operations and may find the subtle approach far too lackluster (枯燥乏味的) and slow.
Marketeers may bring their own burdens to the process and should take care to separate themselves, at least emotionally, from their personal and cultural history. Oftentimes, this includes racial prejudices that are difficult to shake, earlier political disagreements that have never been fully settled, or old, unhealed war wounds.
Let's look at the race issue first. Companies with Caucasian (白人) marketing personnel returning to post apartheid (种族歧视) South Africa are generally plagued with a feeling that they "owe" something to the new black majority government. It's a completely self generated debt as the government is, in reality, overjoyed that investment has returned after the long embargo. However, this joy doesn't prevent South African companies from taking advantage of their counterparts' guilty feeling when it's time to cut a deal.
On the political front, the relationship between Vietnam and United States is a prime example of two sets of marketeers misinterpreting each other's history and culture when it was time to do business. Following in the wake of the bloody two-decade war that ended in 1975, the United States and Vietnam finally reopened trade in 1994. The Vietnamese assumed that the American business community would heap investment on them to make up for past wrongs, while the Americans thought they would be welcomed as the saviors (救世主) of Vietnam's floundering (困顿的) economy. Most of America's marketeers sent to Vietnam's were small children during the war, and the conflict had little bearing on their lives. Vietnam's decision markers, on the other hand, were primarily veterans of the conflict and saw it as the key element of the relationship. Neither side paid attention to the other's view of history and the results have been decidedly disappointing for almost everyone.
This passage mainly discusses that ______.
A. cultural differences force companies to adjust schedule
B. marketing success and failure are much like history
C. developing countries are hostile to developed countries
D. the history of a country or culture influences the market
听力原文:M: You're going to make a trip to Iceland, aren't you?
W: Yes. But I haven't got the plane ticket yet. I'm thinking of postponing the trip to next month since this is the busiest month for the airlines.
Q: What do we know about the woman from the conversation?
(19)
A. She has to change the time for the trip.
B. She hasn't decided where to go next month.
C. She can't afford the time for the trip.
D. She will manage to leave this month.