Now comes word from the University of California, Berkeley, a new study has confirmed that the richer you are the less compassionate you are In a study just published in the journal Emotion, psychologist Jennifer Stellar sought to determine the empathic capacities of a group of 300 college students, who had been hand-selected for maximum economic diversity. As a rule, college students have just one income level: poor. Stellar thus chose her subjects based on the income of the people who respond to the requests and write the checks: the parents. In the first of three experiments, she had 148 of her subjects fill out reports how often they experience emotions such as joy, love, compassion and horror. She also had them agree or disagree with statements like "I often notice people who need help." When the numbers on these lists were processed, Stellar found no meaningful personality differences among the students that could be attributable to income except one: across the board, the lower the subjects' family income, the higher their score on compassion. The second study involved 64 subjects who watched two videos -- an emotionally neutral instructional video on construction techniques, and a far more charged one that involved real families coping with a cancer-stricken child. Again, the subjects filled out emotional lists and again they scored similarly. But the lower-income volunteers continued to come out higher on the compassion-and-empathy scale. During this study, Stellar also used heartbeat monitors to determine their physical reactions to the two videos. There was, not surprisingly, no difference in heart rate when the instructional video was playing, but when the cancer stories began, the heartbeats of the lower-income volunteers slowed noticeably -- a counterintuitive sign of caring. An immediate threat to ourselves or another causes heart rate to jump, the better to snap into action to respond to the danger. An emotional crisis can have the opposite physical effect on observers -- helping them settle... What can be the best title of the text? A) Without money? That's not a big deal B) Hate money? Then try to be low-income C) Got money? Then you might lack sympathy D) Too much money? Come to experience hardships
C
Speed-reading is a necessary skill in the Internet age.We skim over articles, e-mails and WeChat to try to grasp key words and the essential meaning of a certain text.Surrounded with information from our electronic devices, it would be impossible to cope if we read word by word, line by line.But a new trend calls on people to unplug and enjoy reading slowly, listing benefits beyond the intelligent stimulation. A recent story from The Wall Street Journal reported on a book club in Wellington, New Zealand, where members meet in a cafe and turn off their smartphones.They sink into cozy chairs and read in silence for an hour. Unlike traditional book clubs, the point of the slow reading club isn't exchanging ideas about a certain book, but to get away from electronic devices and read in a quiet, relaxed environment. According to the Journal, the Wellington book club is just one example of a movement started by book lovers who miss the old-fashioned way of reading before the Internet and smartphones. Slow readers, such as The Atlantic's Maura Kelly, say a regular reading habit sharpens the mind, improves concentration, reduces stress levels and deepens the ability to sympathize. Another study published last year in Science showed that reading novels helps people understand other's mental states and beliefs, a fundamental skill in building relationships. Yet technology has made us less attentive readers. Screens have changed our reading patterns from the straight and information.left-to-right sequence to a wild skimming and skipping pattern as we hunt for important words and information. Reading text punctuated with links leads to weaker comprehension than reading plain text. The Internet may have made us stupider, says Patrick Kingsley from The Guardian. Because of the Internet, he says, we have become very good at collecting a wide range of interesting news, but we are also gradually forgetting how to sit back, reflect, and relate all these facts to each other. Slow reading means a return to an uninterrupted,... What's the best title for the passage? A) Benefit of Reading Clubs. B) Return of Slow Reading. C) Reading of the Internet Age. D) Influence of Speed Reading.
B
Q: If you want to get the most out of the study of a language, you must also read for pleasure: novels, plays, travel books, and so on. And in reading books of this kind the important thing is _ ; to try to grasp what the writer is going to tell you in the book as a whole. This is impossible if you stop and think over the meaning of every single word which happens to be unfamiliar. You can not enjoy a story if you stop half a dozen times on every page in order to look up words in the dictionary. You may even prevent yourself from understanding the story as a whole by doing this. When you are reading books of this kind, therefore, you will usually have to depend mainly on the context to help you. If you meet an unfamiliar word, do not let it take too much of your attention from the main idea of the story. In all probability you will meet the same word again a few pages later on in a slightly different context, and each time you see it that your understanding of it will become more exact. .What is the passage's main idea? A) You can learn a lot from the study of a language. B) Guess words' meanings according to context. C) Reading for pleasure is important. D) Reading skills for books like novels, plays and so on
A: D
(Question)
The red crab lives on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean and has been found nowhere else in the world. But on its homeland it is a very significant species -- some 120 million individuals cover the rain forest floor and play a major role in determining the structure of the ecosystem. These large crabs are active during the day but prefer to stay in the shade and can die in the heat of direct sunlight. They feed on fallen leaves, seeds, fruits and flowers, recycling nutrients and helping to determine the spread and composition of native plants. Most of the year the red crabs live in the holes they dig throughout the forest. During the dry season they hide in these shelters to keep their body wet and remain there for two to three months. But when wet season returns in October or November they begin a legendary mass migration to their seaside breeding grounds, moving in color1ful wave that wash over all obstacles like roads (including special passages and some closed roads built for the red crab) and even seaside cliffs. The annual migration is also closely tied to the lunar schedule. The crabs arrive at the coast and breed at such a time that the females can produce eggs and develop them in caves for a dozen or so days before carrying them into the sea exactly when high tide turns between the last quarter and new moon. During this period sea level on the beaches varies the least and offers an easier approach, which is so important that if the weather delays the migration crabs will put off laying eggs until the next lunar month. Red crab eggs grow right away, and the young live in the sea for a month before returning to the coast, changing into air breathers, and slowly returning inland to begin the cycle once again. What's important for the red crab to reproduce their young? A) The right caves. B) The number of the crabs. C) The movement of the moon. D) The temperature of the tide.
(Answer)
C