四六级

　　Professor Smith recently persuaded 35 people, 23 ofthem women, to keep a diary of all their absent-mindedactions for a fortnight. When he came toanalyse their embarrassing lapses(差错)in a scientificreport, hewas surprised to find that nearly all ofthem fell into a few groupings, Nordid the lapsesappear to be entirely random(随机的).

　　One of the women, for instance, on leaving her house for work one morning threw her dog herearrings and tried to fix a dog biscuit on her ear. "the explanation for this is that the brain islike a computer," explains the professor. "People programme themselves to do certain activitiesregularly. It was the woman’s custom every morning to throw her dog two biscuits and thenput on her earrings. But somehow the action got reversed in the programme," About one intwenty of the incidents the volunteers reported were these "programme assembly failures,"

　　Altogether the volunteers logged 433 unintentional actions that they found themselves doing---an average of twelve each, There appear to be peak periods in the day when we are at ourzaniest(荒谬可笑的).These aretwo hours some time between eight a.m. and noon, between fourand six p.m. with a smaller peak between eight and ten p.m."Among men the peak seems to bewhen a changeover in brain’ programmes’ occurs, as for instance between going to and fromwork." Women on average reported slightly more lapses----- 12.5 compared with 10.9 for menm probably because they were more reliable reporters.

　　A startling finding of the research is that the absent-minded activity is a hazard of doingthings in which we are skilled. Normally, you would expect that skill reduces the number oferrors we make. But trying to avoid silly slips by concentrating more could make things a lotworse m even dangerous.

　　1. In his study Professor Smith asked the subjects ________

　　A. to keep track of people who tend too forget things

　　B. to report their embarrassing lapses at random

　　C. to analyse their awkward experiences scientifically

　　D. to keep a record of what they did unintentionally

　　2. Professor Smith discovered that ________

　　A. certain patterns can be identified in the recorded incidents

　　B. many people were too embarrassed to admit their absent-mindedness

　　C. men tend to be more absent-minded than women

　　D. absent-mindedness is an excusable human weakness

　　3. "Programme assembly failures" (Line 6, Para. 2) refers to the phenomenon thatpeople ______

　　A. often fail to programme their routines beforehand

　　B. tend to make mistakes when they are in a hurry

　　C. unconsciously change the sequence of doing things

　　D. are likely to mess things up if they are too tired

　　4. We learn from the third paragraph that _______

　　A. absent-mindedness tends to occur during certain hours of the day

　　B. women are very careful to perform actions during peak periods

　　C. women experience more peak periods of absent-mindedness

　　D. men’s absent-mindedness often results in funny situations

　　5.It can be concluded from the passage that _____

　　A. people should avoid doing important things during peak periods of lapses

　　B. hazards can be avoided when people do things they are good at

　　C. people should be careful when programming their actions

　　D. lapses cannot always be attributed to lack of concentration

　　参考答案：

　　1.[D] 事实细节题。本文第1句中的to keep a diary of all their absent-minded actions就是指to keep a record of what they did unintentionally,题目中的subjects指实验对象，被测试者。

　　2.[A] 事实细节题。根据第2句中nearly all of them fell into a few groupings可以找到本题答案，题目中的discover是该句中find的同义词,A的patterns与原文中的groupings意义相同。

　　3.[C] 语义题。根据第2段最后两句提到,但是不知怎么的这种行为在程序中颠倒了。这些被测试者报告的事件中二十个中有一个属于这种“流水线程序错误”。C的unconsciously与somehow对应,change the sequence of doing things与the action got reversed对应，故本题选C。

　　4.[A] 事实细节题。根据第3段的第2、3句“一天之中似乎存在一些人们易犯荒谬可笑错误的高峰时段”,之后到举了几个高峰时间，可知A与之相符。

　　5.[D] 推理判断题。根据文章最后两句“一般来说，我们会以为技术娴熟可以减少错误。但是为了避免出现愚蠢的失误而更加专注，只会把事情弄得更糟糕，甚至会导致危险。”可知D“差错并不总是注意力不集中导致的” 正确。

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