Tổng hợp topic Health & Medicine IELTS READING (PDF)(Phần 3)

How baby talk gives infant brains a boost

A. The typical way of talking to a baby – high-pitched, exaggerated and repetitious – is a source of fascination for linguists who hope to understand how ‘baby talk’ impacts on learning. Most babies start developing their hearing while still in the womb, prompting some hopeful parents to play classical music to their pregnant bellies. Some research even suggests that infants are listening to adult speech as early as 10 weeks before being born, gathering the basic building blocks of their family’s native tongue.

B. Early language exposure seems to have benefits to the brain – for instance, studies suggest that babies raised in bilingual homes are better at learning how to mentally prioritize information. So how does the sweet if sometimes absurd sound of infant-directed speech influence a baby’s development? Here are some recent studies that explore the science behind baby talk.

C. Fathers don’t use baby talk as often or in the same ways as mothers – and that’s perfectly OK, according to a new study. Mark VanDam of Washington State University at Spokane and colleagues equipped parents with recording devices and speech-recognition software to study the way they interacted with their youngsters during a normal day. ‘We found that moms do exactly what you’d expect and what’s been described many times over,’ VanDam explains. ‘But we found that dads aren’t doing the same thing. Dads didn’t raise their pitch or fundamental frequency when they talked to kids.’ Their role may be rooted in what is called the bridge hypothesis, which dates back to 1975. It suggests that fathers use less familial language to provide their children with a bridge to the kind of speech they’ll hear in public. ‘The idea is that a kid gets to practice a certain kind of speech with mom and another kind of speech with dad, so the kid then has a wider repertoire of kinds of speech to practice,’ says VanDam.

D. Scientists from the University of Washington and the University of Connecticut collected thousands of 30-second conversations between parents and their babies, fitting 26 children with audio-recording vests that captured language and sound during a typical eight-hour day. The study found that the more baby talk parents used, the more their youngsters began to babble. And when researchers saw the same babies at age two, they found that frequent baby talk had dramatically boosted vocabulary, regardless of socioeconomic status. ‘Those children who listened to a lot of baby talk were talking more than the babies that listened to more adult talk or standard speech,’ says Nairán Ramirez-Esparza of the University of Connecticut. ‘We also found that it really matters whether you use baby talk in a one-on-one context,’ she adds. ‘The more parents use baby talk one-on-one, the more babies babble, and the more they babble, the more words they produce later in life.’

E. Another study suggests that parents might want to pair their youngsters up so they can babble more with their own kind. Researchers from McGill University and Université du Québec à Montréal found that babies seem to like listening to each other rather than to adults – which may be why baby talk is such a universal tool among parents. They played repeating vowel sounds made by a special synthesizing device that mimicked sounds made by either an adult woman or another baby. This way, only the impact of the auditory cues was observed. The team then measured how long each type of sound held the infants’ attention. They found that the ‘infant’ sounds held babies’ attention nearly 40 percent longer. The baby noises also induced more reactions in the listening infants, like smiling or lip moving, which approximates sound making. The team theorizes that this attraction to other infant sounds could help launch the learning process that leads to speech. ‘It may be some property of the sound that is just drawing their attention,’ says study co-author Linda Polka. ‘Or maybe they are really interested in that particular type of sound because they are starting to focus on their own ability to make sounds. We are speculating here but it might catch their attention because they recognize it as a sound they could possibly make.’

F. In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a total of 57 babies from two slightly different age groups – seven months and eleven and a half months – were played a number of syllables from both their native language (English) and a non-native tongue (Spanish). The infants were placed in a brain-activation scanner that recorded activity in a brain region known to guide the motor movements that produce speech. The results suggest that listening to baby talk prompts infant brains to start practicing their language skills. ‘Finding activation in motor areas the baby brain is engaged in trying to talk back right from the start, and suggests that seven-month-olds’ brains are already trying to figure out how to make interesting finding was that while the seven-month-olds responded to all speech sounds regardless of language, the brains of the older infants worked harder at the motor activations of non-native sounds compared to native sounds. The study may have also uncovered a process by which babies recognize differences between their native language and other tongues.

Questions 14-17
Look at the following ideas (Questions 14-17) and the list of researchers below. Match each idea with the correct researcher, A, B or C. Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

NB  You may use any letter more than once.

14.   the importance of adults giving babies individual attention when talking to them

15.   the connection between what babies hear and their own efforts to create speech
16.the advantage for the baby of having two parents each speaking in a different way
17.   the connection between the amount of baby talk babies hear and how much vocalising they do themselves

List of Researchers

A.          Mark VanDam
B.          Nairán Ramirez-Esparza
C.          Patricia Kuhl

Questions 18-23
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 18-23 on your answer sheet.

Research into how parents talk to babies

Researchers at Washington State University used 18……………………………, together with specialised computer programs, to analyse how parents interacted with their babies during a normal day. The study revealed that 19…………… tended not to modify their ordinary speech patterns when interacting with their babies. According to an idea known as the 20……………………….., they may use a more adult type of speech to prepare infants for the language they will hear outside the family home. According to the researchers, hearing baby talk from one parent and ‘normal’ language from the other expands the baby’s 21………………………… of types of speech which they can practise.

Meanwhile, another study carried out by scientists from the University of Washington and the University of Connecticut recorded speech and sound using special 22……………………………… that the babies were equipped with. When they studies the babies again at age two, the found that those who had heard a lot of baby talk in infancy had a much larger 23……………………………. Than those who had not.

Questions 24-26
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
24.   a reference to a change which occurs in babies’ brain activity before the end of their first year.

25.   an example of what some parents do for their baby’s benefit before birth

26.   a mention of babies’ preference for the sounds that other babies make

The concept of intelligence

A. Looked at in one way, everyone knows what intelligence is; looked at in another way, no one does. In other words, people all have unconscious notions – known as ‘implicit theories’ – of intelligence, but no one knows for certain what it actually is. This chapter addresses how people conceptualize intelligence, whatever it may actually be. But why should we even care what people think intelligence is, as opposed only to valuing whatever it actually is? There are at least four reasons people’s conceptions of intelligence matter.
B. First, implicit theories of intelligence drive the way in which people perceive and evaluate their own intelligence and that of others. To better understand the judgments people make about their own and others’ abilities, it is useful to learn about people’s implicit theories. For example, parents’ implicit theories of their children’s language development will determine at what ages they will be willing to make various corrections in their children’s speech. More generally, parents’ implicit theories of intelligence will determine at what ages they believe their children are ready to perform various cognitive tasks. Job interviewers will make hiring decisions on the basis of their implicit theories of intelligence. People will decide who to be friends with on the basis of such theories. In sum, knowledge about implicit theories of intelligence is important because this knowledge is so often used by people to make judgments in the course of their everyday lives.
C. Second, the implicit theories of scientific investigators ultimately give rise to their explicit theories. Thus it is useful to find out what these implicit theories are. Implicit theories provide a framework that is useful in defining the general scope of a phenomenon – especially a not-well-understood phenomenon. These implicit theories can suggest what aspects of the phenomenon have been more or less attended to in previous investigations.
D. Third, implicit theories can be useful when an investigator suspects that existing explicit theories are wrong or misleading. If an investigation of implicit theories reveals little correspondence between the extant implicit and explicit theories, the implicit theories may be wrong. But the possibility also needs to be taken into account that the explicit theories are wrong and in need of correction or supplementation. For example, some implicit theories of intelligence suggest the need for expansion of some of our explicit theories of the construct.
E. Finally, understanding implicit theories of intelligence can help elucidate developmental and cross-cultural differences. As mentioned earlier, people have expectations for intellectual performances that differ for children of different ages. How these expectations differ is in part a function of culture. For example, expectations for children who participate in Western-style schooling are almost certain to be different from those for children who do not participate in such schooling.
F. I have suggested that there are three major implicit theories of how intelligence relates to society as a whole (Sternberg, 1997). These might be called Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, and Jacksonian. These views are not based strictly, but rather, loosely, on the philosophies of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson, three great statesmen in the history of the United States.
G. The Hamiltonian view, which is similar to the Platonic view, is that people are born with different levels of intelligence and that those who are less intelligent need the good offices of the more intelligent to keep them in line, whether they are called government officials or, in Plato’s term, philosopher-kings. Herrnstein and Murray (1994) seem to have shared this belief when they wrote about the emergence of a cognitive (high-IQ) elite, which eventually would have to take responsibility for the largely irresponsible masses of non-elite (low-IQ) people who cannot take care of themselves. Left to themselves, the unintelligent would create, as they always have created, a kind of chaos.
H. The Jeffersonian view is that people should have equal opportunities, but they do not necessarily avail themselves equally of these opportunities and are not necessarily equally rewarded for their accomplishments. People are rewarded for what they accomplish if given equal opportunity. Low achievers are not rewarded to the same extent as high achievers. In the Jeffersonian view, the goal of education is not to favor or foster an elite, as in the Hamiltonian tradition, but rather to allow children the opportunities to make full use of the skills they have. My own views are similar to these (Sternberg, 1997).
I. The Jacksonian view is that all people are equal, not only as human beings but in terms of their competencies – that one person would serve as well as another in government or on a jury or in almost any position of responsibility. In this view of democracy, people are essentially intersubstitutable except for specialized skills, all of which can be learned. In this view, we do not need or want any institutions that might lead to favoring one group over another.
J. Implicit theories of intelligence and of the relationship of intelligence to society perhaps need to be considered more carefully than they have been because they often serve as underlying presuppositions for explicit theories and even experimental designs that are then taken as scientific contributions. Until scholars are able to discuss their implicit theories and thus their assumptions, they are likely to miss the point of what others are saying when discussing their explicit theories and their data.

Questions 1-3
Reading Passage 1 has ten sections, A-J.

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-J, in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

1. information about how non-scientists’ assumptions about intelligence influence their behavior towards others

2. a reference to lack of clarity over the definition of intelligence

3. the point that a researcher’s implicit and explicit theories may be very different

Questions 4-6
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 4-6 on your answer sheet, write:

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

4. Slow language development in children is likely to prove disappointing to their parents.

5. People’s expectations of what children should gain from education are universal.

6. Scholars may discuss theories without fully understanding each other.

Questions 7-13

Look at the following statements (Questions 7-13) and the list of theories below. Match each statement with the correct theory, A, B or C. Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

7. It is desirable for the same possibilities to be open to everyone.

8. No section of society should have preferential treatment at the expense of another.

9. People should only gain benefits on the basis of what they actually achieve.

10. Variation in intelligence begins at birth.

11. The more intelligent people should be in positions of power.

12. Everyone can develop the same abilities.

13. People of low intelligence are likely to lead uncontrolled lives.

List of Theories

A. Hamiltonian
B. Jeffersonian
C. Jacksonian

Saving bugs to find new drugs

ZOOLOGIST ROSS PIPER LOOKS AT THE POTENTIAL OF INSECTS IN PHARMACEUTICAL RESEARCH

A. More drugs than you might think are derived from, or inspired by, compounds found in living things. Looking to nature for the soothing and curing of our ailments is nothing new – we have been doing it for tens of thousands of years. You only have to look at other primates – such as the capuchin monkeys who rub themselves with toxin-oozing millipedes to deter mosquitoes or the chimpanzees who use noxious forest plants to rid themselves of intestinal parasites – to realize that our ancient ancestors too probably had a basic grasp of medicine.
B. Pharmaceutical science and chemistry built on these ancient foundations and perfected the extraction, characterization, modification, and testing of these natural products. Then, for a while, modern pharmaceutical science moved its focus away from nature and into the laboratory, designing chemical compounds from scratch. The main cause of this shift is that although there are plenty of promising chemical compounds in nature, finding them is far from easy. Securing sufficient numbers of the organism in question, isolating and characterizing the compounds of interest, and producing large quantities of these compounds are all significant hurdles.
C. Laboratory-based drug discovery has achieved varying levels of success, something which has now prompted the development of new approaches focusing once again on natural products. With the ability to mine genomes for useful compounds, it is now evident that we have barely scratched the surface of nature’s molecular diversity. This realization, together with several looming health crises, such as antibiotic resistance, has put bioprospecting – the search for useful compounds in nature – firmly back on the map.
D. Insects are the undisputed masters of the terrestrial domain, where they occupy every possible niche. Consequently, they have a bewildering array of interactions with other organisms, something which has driven the evolution of an enormous range of very interesting compounds for defensive and offensive purposes. Their remarkable diversity exceeds that of every other group of animals on the planet combined. Yet even though insects are far and away from the most diverse animals in existence, their potential as sources of therapeutic compounds is yet to be realized.
E. From the tiny proportion of insects that have been investigated, several promising compounds have been identified. For example, all of Eron, an antimicrobial compound produced by blowfly larvae, is used as an antiviral and antitumor agent in South Korea and Russia. The larvae of a few other insect species are being investigated for the potent antimicrobial compounds they produce. Meanwhile, a compound from the venom of the wasp Polybia Paulista has potential in cancer treatment.
F. Why is it that insects have received relatively little attention in bioprospecting? Firstly, there are so many insects that, without some manner of targeted approach, investigating this huge variety of species is a daunting task. Secondly, insects are generally very small, and the glands inside them that secrete potentially useful compounds are smaller still. This can make it difficult to obtain sufficient quantities of the compound for subsequent testing. Thirdly, although we consider insects to be everywhere, the reality of this ubiquity is vast numbers of a few extremely common species. Many insect species are infrequently encountered and very difficult to rear in captivity, which, again, can leave us with insufficient material to work with.
G. My colleagues and I at Aberystwyth University in the UK have developed an approach in which we use our knowledge of ecology as a guide to target our efforts. The creatures that particularly interest us are the many insects that secrete powerful poison for subduing prey and keeping it fresh for future consumption. There are even more insects that are masters of exploiting filthy habitats, such as feces and carcasses, where they are regularly challenged by thousands of micro-organisms. These insects have many antimicrobial compounds for dealing with pathogenic bacteria and fungi, suggesting that there is certainly potential to find many compounds that can serve as or inspire new antibiotics.
H. Although natural history knowledge points us in the right direction, it doesn’t solve the problems associated with obtaining useful compounds from insects. Fortunately, it is now possible to snip out the stretches of the insect’s DNA that carry the codes for the interesting compounds and insert them into cell lines that allow larger quantities to be produced. And although the road from isolating and characterizing compounds with desirable qualities to developing a commercial product is very long and full of pitfalls, the variety of successful animal-derived pharmaceuticals on the market demonstrates there is a precedent here that is worth exploring.
I. With every bit of wilderness that disappears, we deprive ourselves of potential medicines. As much as I’d love to help develop a groundbreaking insect-derived medicine, my main motivation for looking at insects in this way is conservation. I sincerely believe that all species, however small and seemingly insignificant, have a right to exist for their own sake. If we can shine a light on the darker recesses of nature’s medicine cabinet, exploring the useful chemistry of the most diverse animals on the planet, I believe we can make people think differently about the value of nature.

Questions 14-20
Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs, A-I.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

14. mention of factors driving a renewed interest in natural medicinal compounds.

15. how recent technological advances have made insect research easier

16. examples of animals which use medicinal substances from nature

17. reasons why it is challenging to use insects in drug research

18. reference to how interest in drug research may benefit wildlife

19. a reason why nature-based medicines fell out of favor for a period

20. an example of an insect-derived medicine in use at the moment

Questions 21-22
Choose TWO letters, A-E. Write the correct letters in boxes 21 and 22 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following make insects interesting for drug research?

A. the huge number of individual insects in the world

B. the variety of substances insects have developed to protect themselves

C. the potential to extract and make use of insects’ genetic codes

D. the similarities between different species of insect

E. the manageable size of most insects

Questions 23-26
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

Research at Aberystwyth University

Ross Piper and fellow zoologists at Aberystwyth University are using their expertise in 23………………………… when undertaking bioprospecting with insects. They are especially interested in the compounds that insects produce to overpower and preserve their 24…………………………. They are also interested in compounds which insects use to protect themselves from pathogenic bacteria and fungi found in their 25………………………… Piper hopes that these substances will be useful in the development of drugs such as 26……………………………..

The secret of staying young

Pheidole dentata, a native ant of the south-eastern U.S., isn’t immortal. But scientists have found that it doesn’t seem to show any signs of aging. Old workers ants can do everything just as well as the youngsters, and their brains appear just as sharp. ‘We get a picture that these ants really don’t decline,’ says Ysabel Giraldo, who studies the ants for her doctoral thesis at Boston University.

Such age-defying feats are rare in the animal kingdom. Naked mole rats can live for almost 30 years and stay fit for nearly their entire lives. They can still reproduce even when old, and they never get cancer. But the vast majority of animals deteriorate with age just like people do. Like the naked mole rat, ants are social creatures that usually live in highly organised colonies. ‘It’s this social complexity that makes P. dentata useful for studying aging in people,’ says Giraldo, now at the California Institute of Technology. Humans are also highly social, a trait that has been connected to healthier aging. By contrast, most animal studies of aging use mice, worms or fruit flies, which all lead much more isolated lives.
In the lab, P. dentata worker ants typically live for around 140 days. Giraldo focused on ants at four age ranges: 20 to 22 days, 45 to 47 days, 95 to 97 days and 120 to 122 days. Unlike all previous studies, which only estimated how old the ants were, her work tracked the ants from the time the pupae became adults, so she knew their exact ages. Then she put them through a range of tests.

Giraldo watched how well the ants took care of the young of the colony, recording how often each ant attended to, carried and fed them. She compared how well 20-day-old and 95-day-old ants followed the telltale scent that the insects usually leave to mark a trail to food. She tested how ants responded to light and also measured how active they were by counting how often ants in a small dish walked across a line. And she experimented with how ants react to live prey: a tethered fruit fly. Giraldo expected the older ants to perform poorly in all these tasks. But the elderly insects were all good caretakers and trail-followers – the 95-day-old ants could track the scent even longer than their younger counterparts. They all responded do light well, and the older ants were more active. And when it came to reacting to prey, the older ants attacked the poor fruit fly just as aggressively as the young ones did, flaring their mandibles or pulling at the fly’s legs.

Then Giraldo compared the brains of 20-day-old and 95-day-ole ants, identifying any cells that were close to death. She saw no major differences with age, nor was there any difference in the location of the dying cells, showing that age didn’t seem to affect specific brain functions. Ants and other insects have structures in their brains called mushroom bodies, which are important for processing information, learning and memory. She also wanted to see if aging affects the density of synaptic complexes within these structures – regions where neurons come together. Again, the answer was no. what was more, he old ants didn’t experience any drop in the levels of either serotonin or dopamine – brain chemicals whose decline often coincides with aging. In humans, for example, a decrease in serotonin has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
‘This is the first time anyone has looked at both behavioral and neural changes in these ants so thoroughly,’ says Giraldo, who recently published the findings in the Proceeding of the Royal Society B. Scientists have looked at some similar aspects in bees, but the results of recent bee studies were mixed – some studies showed age-related declines, which biologists call senescence, and others didn’t. ‘For now, the study raises more questions than it answers,’ Giraldo says, ‘including how P. dentata stays in such good shape.’

Also, if the ants don’t deteriorate with age, why do they die at all? Out in the wild, the ants probably don’t live for a full 140 days thanks to predators, disease and just being in an environment that’s much harsher than the comforts of the lab. ‘The lucky ants that do live into old age may suffer a steep decline just before dying,’ Giraldo says, but she can’t say for sure because her study wasn’t designed to follow an ant’s final moments.

‘It will be important to extend these findings to other species of social insects,’ says Gene E. Robinson, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This ant might be unique, or it might represent a broader pattern among other social bugs with possible clues to the science of aging in larger animals. Either way, it seems that for these ants, age really doesn’t matter.

Questions 1-8
Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answer in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

Ysabel Giraldo’s research

Focused on a total of 1………………………….. different age groups of ants, analyzing

Behaviour:

• how well ants looked after their 2 …………………………..
• their ability to locate 3………………………… using a scent trail
• the effect that  4………………………….. had on them
• how 5…………………………. they attacked prey

Brains:

• comparison between age and the 6…………………………… of dying cells in the brains of ants
• condition of synaptic complexes (areas in which 7…………………………… meet) in the brain’s ‘mushroom bodies’
• level of two 8………………………….. in the brain associated with ageing

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information give in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write:

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. Pheidole dentata ants are the only known animals which remain active for almost their whole lives.

10. Ysabel Giraldo was the first person to study Pheidole dentata ants using precise data about the insects’ ages.

11. The ants in Giraldo’s experiments behaved as she had predicted that they would.

12. The recent studies of bees used different methods of measuring age-related decline.

13. Pheidole dentata ants kept in laboratory conditions tend to live longer lives.

Having a laugh

The findings of psychological scientists reveal the importance of humour

Humans start developing a sense of humour as early as six weeks old, when babies begin to laugh and smile in response to stimuli. Laughter is universal across all human cultures and even exists in some form in rats, chimps, and bonobos. Like other human emotions and expressions, laughter and humour psychological scientists with rich resources for studying human psychology, ranging from the development of language to the neuroscience of social perception.

Theories focusing on the evolution of laughter point to it as an important adaptation for social communication. Take, for example, the recorded laughter in TV comedy shows. Back in 1950, US sound engineer Charley Douglass hated dealing with the unpredictable laughter of live audiences, so started recording his own ‘laugh tracks’. These were intended to help people at home feel like they were in a social situation, such as a crowded theatre. Douglass even recorded various types of laughter, as well as mixtures of laugher from men, women, and children. In doing so, he picked up on a quality of laughter that is now interesting researchers: a simple ‘haha’ communicates a remarkable amount of socially relevant information.

In one study conducted in 2016, samples of laughter from pairs of English-speaking students were recorded at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A team made up of more than 30 psychological scientists, anthropologists, and biologists then played these recording to listeners from 24 diverse societies, from indigenous tribes in New Guinea to city-dwellers in India and Europe. Participants were asked whether they thought the people laughing were friends or strangers. On average, the results were remarkably consistent: worldwide, people’s guesses were correct approximately 60% of the time.

Researchers have also found that different types of laughter serve as codes to complex human social hierarchies. A team led by Christopher Oveis from the University of California, San Diego, found that high-status individuals had different laughs from low-status individuals, and that strangers’ judgements of an individual’s social status were influenced by the dominant or submissive quality of their laughter. In their study, 48 male college students were randomly assigned to groups of four, with each group composed of two low-status members, who had just joined their college fraternity group, and two high-status members, older student took a turn at being teased by the others, involving the use of mildly insulting nicknames. Analysis revealed that, as expected, high-status individuals produced more dominant laughs and fewer submissive laughs relative to the low-status individuals. Meanwhile, low-status individuals were more likely to change their laughter based on their position of power; that is, the newcomers produced more dominant laughs when they were in the ‘powerful’ role of teasers. Dominant laughter was higher in pitch, louder, and more variable in tone than submissive laughter.

A random group of volunteers then listened to an equal number of dominant and submissive laughs from both the high- and low-status individuals, and were asked to estimate the social status of the laughter. In line with predictions, laughers producing dominant laughs were perceived to be significantly higher in status than laughers producing submissive laughs. ‘This was particularly true for low-status individuals, who were rated as significantly higher in status when displaying a dominant versus submissive laugh,’ Oveis and colleagues note. ‘Thus, by strategically displaying more dominant laughter when the context allows, low-status individuals may achieve higher status in the eyes of others.’ However, high-status individuals were rated as high-status whether they produced their natural dominant laugh or tried to do a submissive one.

Another study, conducted by David Cheng and Lu Wang of Australian National University, was based on the hypothesis that humour might provide a respite from tedious situations in the workplace. This ‘mental break’ might facilitate the replenishment of mental resources. To test this theory, the researchers recruited 74 business students, ostensibly for an experiment on perception. First, the students performed a tedious task in which they had to cross out every instance of the letter ‘e’ over two pages of text. The students then were randomly assigned to watch a video clip eliciting either humour, contentment, or neutral feelings. Some watched a clip of the BBC comedy Mr. Bean, others a relaxing scene with dolphins swimming in the ocean, and others a factual video about the management profession.

The students then completed a task requiring persistence in which they were asked to guess the potential performance of employees based on provided profiles, and were told that making 10 correct assessments in a row would lead to a win. However, the software was programmed such that is was nearly impossible to achieve 10 consecutive correct answers. Participants were allowed to quit the task at any point. Students who had watched the Mr. Bean video ended up spending significantly more time working on the task, making twice as many predictions as the other two groups.

Cheng and Wang then replicated these results in a second study, during which they had participants complete long multiplication questions by hand. Again, participants who watched the humorous video spent significantly more time working on this tedious task and completed more questions correctly than did the students in either of the other groups.

‘Although humour has been found to help relieve stress and facilitate social relationships, traditional view of task performance implies that individuals should avoid things such as humour that may distract them from the accomplishment of task goals,’ Cheng and Wang conclude. ‘We suggest that humour is not only enjoyable but more importantly, energising.’

Questions 27-31

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.
27. When referring to laughter in the first paragraphs, the writer emphasises

A. its impact on language.

B. its function in human culture.

C. its value to scientific research.

D. its universality in animal societies.
28. What does the writer suggest about Charley Douglass?

A. He understood the importance of enjoying humour in a group setting.

B. He believed that TV viewers at home needed to be told when to laugh.

C. He wanted his shows to appeal to audiences across the social spectrum.

D. He preferred shows where audiences were present in the recording studio.
29. What makes the Santa Cruz study particularly significant?

A. the various different types of laughter that were studied

B. the similar results produced by a wide range of cultures

C. the number of different academic disciplines involved

D. the many kinds of people whose laughter was recorded
30. Which of the following happened in the San Diego study?

A. Some participants became very upset.

B. Participants exchanged roles.

C. Participants who had not met before became friends.

D. Some participants were unable to laugh.
31. In the fifth paragraph, what did the results of the San Diego study suggest?

A. It is clear whether a dominant laugh is produced by a high- or low-status person.

B. Low-status individuals in a position of power will still produce submissive laughs.

C. The submissive laughs of low- and high-status individuals are surprisingly similar.

D. High-status individuals can always be identified by their way of laughing.

Questions 32-36
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-H, below. Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 32-36 on your answer sheet.

The benefits of humour

In one study at Australian National University, randomly chosen groups of participants were shown one of three videos, each designed to generate a different kind of 32………………….. . When all participants were then given a deliberately frustrating task to do, it was found that those who had watched the 33…………………….. video persisted with the task for longer and tried harder to accomplish the task than either of the other two groups.

A second study in which participants were asked to perform a particularly 34……………… task produced similar results. According to researchers David Cheng and Lu Wang, these findings suggest that humour not only reduces 35…………… and helps build social connections but it may also have a 36……………. Effect on the body and mind.

A. laughter

B. relaxing

C. boring

D. anxiety

E. stimulating

F. emotion

G. enjoyment

H. amusing

Questions 37-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet, write:

TRUE if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

FALSE if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
37. Participants in the Santa Cruz study were more accurate at identifying the laughs of friends than those of strangers.

38. The researchers in the San Diego study were correct in their predictions regarding the behaviour of the high-status individuals.

39. The participants in the Australian National University study were given a fixed amount of time to complete the task focusing on employee profiles.

40. Cheng and Wang’s conclusions were in line with established notions regarding task performance.

Timur Gareyev – blindfold chess champion

A. Next month, a chess player named Timur Gareyev will take on nearly 50 opponents at once. But that is not the hard part. While his challengers will play the games as normal, Gareyev himself will be blindfolded. Even by world record standards, it sets a high bar for human performance. The 28-year-old already stands out in the rarefied world of blindfold chess. He has a fondness for bright clothes and unusual hairstyles, and he gets his kicks from the adventure sport of BASE jumping. He has already proved himself a strong chess player, too. In a 10-hour chess marathon in 2013, Gareyev played 33 games in his head simultaneously. He won 29 and lost none. The skill has become his brand: he calls himself the Blindfold King.

B. But Gareyev’s prowess has drawn interest from beyond the chess-playing community. In the hope of understanding how he and others like him can perform such mental feats, researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) called him in for tests. They now have their first results. ‘The ability to play a game of chess with your eyes closed is not a far reach for most accomplished player,’ said Jesse Rissman, who runs a memory lab at UCLA. ‘But the thing that’s so remarkable about Timur and a few other individuals is the number of games they can keep active at once. To me it is simply astonishing.’

C. Gareyev learned to play chess in his native Uzbekistan when he was six years old. Tutored by his grandfather, he entered his first tournament aged eight and soon became obsessed with competitions. At 16, he was crowned Asia’s youngest ever chess grandmaster. He moved to the US soon after, and as a student helped his university win its first national chess championship. In 2013, Gareyev was ranked the third best chess player in the US.

D. To the uninitiated, blindfold chess seems to call for superhuman skill. But displays of the feat go back centuries. The first recorded game in Europe was played in 13th-century Florence. In 1947, the Argentinian grandmaster Miguel Najdorf played 45 simultaneous games in his mind, winning 39 in the 24-hour session.

E. Accomplished players can develop the skill of playing blind even without realising it. The nature of the game is to run through possible moves in the mind to see how they play out. From this, regular players develop a memory for the patterns the pieces make, the defences and attacks. ‘You recreate it in your mind,’ said Gareyev. ‘A lot of players are capable of doing what I’m doing.’ The real mental challenge comes from playing multiple games at once in the head. Not only must the positions of each piece on every board be memorised, they must be recalled faithfully when needed, updated with each player’s moves, and then reliably stored again, so the brain can move on to the next board. First moves can be tough to remember because they are fairly uninteresting. But the ends of games are taxing too, as exhaustion sets in. When Gareyev is tired, his recall can get patchy. He sometimes makes moves based on only a fragmented memory of the pieces’ positions.

F. The scientists first had Gareyev perform some standard memory tests. These assessed his ability to hold numbers, pictures and words in mind. One classic test measures how many numbers a person can repeat, both forwards and backwards, soon after hearing them. Most people manage about seven. ‘He was not exceptional on any of these standard tests,’ said Rissman. ‘We didn’t find anything other than playing chess that he seems to be supremely gifted at.’ But next came the brain scans. With Gareyev lying down in the machine, Rissman looked at how well connected the various regions of the chess player’s brain were. Though the results are tentative and as yet unpublished, the scans found much greater than average communication between parts of Gareyev’s brain that make up what is called the frontoparietal control network. Of 63 people scanned alongside the chess player, only one or two scored more highly on the measure. ‘You use this network in almost any complex task. It helps you to allocate attention, keep rules in mind, and work out whether you should be responding or not,’ said Rissman.

G. It was not the only hint of something special in Gareyev’s brain. The scans also suggest that Gareyev’s visual network is more highly connected to other brain parts than usual. Initial results suggest that the areas of his brain that process visual images – such as chess boards – may have stronger links to other brain regions, and so be more powerful than normal. While the analyses are not finalised yet, they may hold the first clues to Gareyev’s extraordinary ability.

H. For the world record attempt, Gareyev hopes to play 47 blindfold games at once in about 16 hours. He will need to win 80% to claim the title. ‘I don’t worry too much about the winning percentage, that’s never been an issue for me,’ he said. ‘The most important part of blindfold chess for me is that I have found the one thing that I can fully dedicate myself to. I miss having an obsession.’

Questions 27-32
Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs, A-H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.
27. a reference to earlier examples of blindfold chess

28. an outline of what blindfold chess involves

29. a claim that Gareyev’s skill is limited to chess

30. why Gareyev’s skill is of interest to scientists

31. an outline of Gareyev’s priorities

32. a reason why the last part of a game may be difficult

Questions 33-36
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 33-36 on your answer sheet, write:

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
33. In the forthcoming games, all the participants will be blindfolded.

34. Gareyev has won competitions in BASE jumping.

35. UCLA is the first university to carry out research into blindfold chess players.

36. Good chess players are likely to be able to play blindfold chess.

Questions 37-40
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write the correct letter in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

How the research was carried out

The researchers started by testing Gareyev’s 37 ……………………; for example, he was required to recall a string of 38 …………… in order and also in reverse order. Although his performance was normal, scans showed an unusual amount of 39 …………………… within the areas of Gareyev’s brain that are concerned with directing attention. In addition, the scans raised the possibility of unusual strength in the parts of his brain that deal with 40 …………………… input.

The Flavor of Pleasure

When it comes to celebrating the flavor of food, our mouth gets all the credit. But in truth, it is the nose that knows.

No matter how much we talk about tasting our favorite flavors, relishing them really depends on a combined input from our senses that we experience through mouth, tongue and nose. The taste, texture, and feel of food are what we tend to focus on, but most important are the slight puffs of air as we chew our food – what scientists call ‘retronasal smell’.
Certainly, our mouths and tongues have taste buds, which are receptors for the five basic flavors: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami, or what is more commonly referred to as savory. But our tongues are inaccurate instruments as far as flavor is concerned. They evolved to recognise only a few basic tastes in order to quickly identify toxins, which in nature are often quite bitter or acidly sour.
All the complexity, nuance, and pleasure of flavor come from the sense of smell operating in the back of the nose. It is there that a kind of alchemy occurs when we breathe up and out the passing whiffs of our chewed food. Unlike a hound’s skull with its extra long nose, which evolved specifically to detect external smells, our noses have evolved to detect internal scents. Primates specialise in savoring the many millions of flavor combinations that they can create for their mouths.
Taste without retronasal smell is not much help in recognising flavor. Smell has been the most poorly understood of our senses, and only recently has neuroscience, led by Yale University’s Gordon Shepherd, begun to shed light on its workings. Shepherd has come up with the term ‘neurogastronomy’ to link the disciplines of food science, neurology, psychology, and anthropology with the savory elements of eating, one of the most enjoyed of human experiences.
In many ways, he is discovering that smell is rather like face recognition. The visual system detects patterns of light and dark and, building on experience, the brain creates a spatial map. It uses this to interpret the interrelationship of the patterns and draw conclusions that allow us to identify people and places. In the same way, we use patterns and ratios to detect both new and familiar flavors. As we eat, specialised receptors in the back of the nose detect the air molecules in our meals. From signals sent by the receptors, the brain understands smells as complex spatial patterns. Using these, as well as input from the other senses, it constructs the idea of specific flavors.
This ability to appreciate specific aromas turns out to be central to the pleasure we get from food, much as our ability to recognise individuals is central to the pleasures of social life. The process is so embedded in our brains that our sense of smell is critical to our enjoyment of life at large. Recent studies show that people who lose the ability to smell become socially insecure, and their overall level of happiness plummets.
Working out the role of smell in flavor interests food scientists, psychologists, and cooks alike. The relatively new discipline of molecular gastronomy, especially, relies on understanding the mechanics of aroma to manipulate flavor for maximum impact. In this discipline, chefs use their knowledge of the chemical changes that take place during cooking to produce eating pleasures that go beyond the ‘ordinary’.
However, whereas molecular gastronomy is concerned primarily with the food or ‘smell’ molecules, neurogastronomy is more focused on the receptor molecules and the brain’s spatial images for smell. Smell stimuli form what Shepherd terms ‘odor objects’, stored as memories, and these have a direct link with our emotions. The brain creates images of unfamiliar smells by relating them to other more familiar smells. Go back in history and this was part of our survival repertoire; like most animals, we drew on our sense of smell, when visual information was scarce, to single out prey.
Thus the brain’s flavor-recognition system is a highly complex perceptual mechanism that puts all five senses to work in various combinations. Visual and sound cues contribute, such as crunching, as does touch, including the texture and feel of food on our lips and in our mouths. Then there are the taste receptors, and finally, the smell, activated when we inhale. The engagement of our emotions can be readily illustrated when we picture some of the wide- ranging facial expressions that are elicited by various foods – many of them hard-wired into our brains at birth. Consider the response to the sharpness of a lemon and compare that with the face that is welcoming the smooth wonder of chocolate.
The flavor-sensing system, ever receptive to new combinations, helps to keep our brains active and flexible. It also has the power to shape our desires and ultimately our bodies. On the horizon we have the positive application of neurogastronomy: manipulating flavor to curb our appetites.

Questions 1-5
Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
1. According to scientists, the term………………………….characterises the most critical factor in appreciating flavour.
2. ‘Savoury’ is a better-known word for………………………
3. The tongue was originally developed to recognise the unpleasant taste of……………………..
4. Human nasal cavities recognize……………………………much better than external ones.
5. Gordon Shepherd uses the word ‘neurogastronomy’ to draw together a number of…………………………related to the enjoyment of eating.

Questions 6-9
Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet

Questions 10-13
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the text for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.
10. In what form does the brain store ‘odor objects’?
11. When seeing was difficult, what did we use our sense of smell to find?
12. Which food item illustrates how flavour and positive emotion are linked?
13. What could be controlled in the future through flavour manipulation?

It’s your choice – or is it really?

As we move from the industrial age to the information age, societal demands on our mental capabilities are no less taxing ...

We are constantly required to process a wide range of information to make decisions. Sometimes, these decisions are trivial, such as what marmalade to buy. At other times, the stakes are higher, such as deciding which symptoms to report to the doctor. However, the fact that we are accustomed to processing large amounts of information does not mean that we are better at it (Chabris & Simons, 2009). Our sensory and cognitive systems have systematic ways of failing of which we are often, perhaps blissfully, unaware.
Imagine that you are taking a walk in your local city park when a tourist approaches you asking for directions. During the conversation, two men carrying a door pass between the two of you. If the person asking for directions had changed places with one of the people carrying the door, would you notice? Research suggests that you might not. Harvard psychologists Simons and Levi (1998) conducted a field study using this exact set-up and found that the change in identity went unnoticed by 7 (46.6%) of the 15 participants. This phenomenon has been termed ‘change blindness’and refers to the difficulty that observers have in noticing changes to visual scenes (e.g. the person swap), when the changes are accompanied by some other visual disturbance (e.g. the passing of the door).
Over the past decade, the change blindness phenomenon has been replicated many times. Especially noteworthy is an experiment by Davies and Hine (2007) who studied whether change blindness affects eyewitness identification. Specifically, participants were presented with a video enactment of a burglary. In the video, a man entered a house, walking through the different rooms and putting valuables into a knapsack. However, the identity of the burglar changed after the first half of the film while the initial burglar was out of sight. Out of the 80 participants, 49 (61%) did not notice the change of the burglar’s identity, suggesting that change blindness may have serious implications for criminal proceedings.
To most of us, it seems bizarre that people could miss such obvious changes while they are paying active attention. However, to catch those changes, attention must be targeted to the changing feature. In the study described above, participants were likely not to have been expecting the change to happen, and so their attention may have been focused on the valuables the burglar was stealing, rather than the burglar.
Drawing from change blindness research, scientists have come to the conclusion that we perceive the world in much less detail than previously thought (Johansson, Hall, & Sikstrom, 2008). Rather than monitoring all of the visual details that surround us, we seem to focus our attention only on those features that are currently meaningful or important, ignoring those that are irrelevant to our current needs and goals.Thus at any given time, our representation of the world surrounding us is crude and incomplete, making it possible for changes or manipulations to go undetected (Chabris & Simons, 2010).
Given the difficulty people have in noticing changes to visual stimuli, one may wonder what would happen if these changes concerned the decisions people make. To examine choice blindness, Hall and colleagues (2010) invited supermarket customers to sample two different kinds of jams and teas. After participants had tasted or smelled both samples, they indicated which one they preferred. Subsequently, they were purportedly given another sample of their preferred choice. On half of the trials, however, these were samples of the non-chosen jam or tea. As expected, only about one-third of the participants detected this manipulation. Based on these findings, Hall and colleagues proposed that choice blindness is a phenomenon that occurs not only for choices involving visual material, but also for choices involving gustatory and olfactory information.
Recently, the phenomenon has also been replicated for choices involving auditory stimuli (Sauerland, Sagana, & Otgaar, 2012). Specifically, participants had to listen to three pairs of voices and decide for each pair which voice they found more sympathetic or more criminal. The voice was then presented again; however, the outcome was manipulated for the second voice pair and participants were presented with the nonchosen voice. Replicating the findings by Hall and colleagues, only 29% of the participants detected this change.
Merckelbach, Jelicic, and Pieters (2011) investigated choice blindness for intensity ratings of one’s own psychological symptoms. Their participants had to rate the frequency with which they experienced 90 common symptoms (e.g. anxiety, lack of concentration, stress, headaches etc.) on a 5-point scale. Prior to a follow-up interview, the researchers inflated ratings for two symptoms by two points. For example, when participants had rated their feelings of shyness, as 2 (i.e. occasionally), it was changed to 4 (i.e. all the time). This time, more than half (57%) of the 28 participants were blind to the symptom rating escalation and accepted it as their own symptom intensity rating. This demonstrates that blindness is not limited to recent preference selections, but can also occur for intensity and frequency.
Together, these studies suggest that choice blindness can occur in a wide variety of situations and can have serious implications for medical and judicial outcomes. Future research is needed to determine how, in those situations, choice blindness can be avoided.

Questions 27-31
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the text? In boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet, write:

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
27. Doctors make decisions according to the symptoms that a patient describes.
28. Our ability to deal with a lot of input material has improved over time.
29. We tend to know when we have made an error of judgement.
30. A legal trial could be significantly affected by change blindness.
31. Scientists have concluded that we try to take in as much detail as possible from our surroundings.

Questions 32-36

Complete the table below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text of each answer. Write your answers in boxes 32-36 on your answer sheet.

Questions 37 and 38
Choose TWO letters, A-E. Write your answers in boxes 37-38 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO statements are true for both the supermarket and voice experiments?
A. The researchers focused on non-visual material.
B. The participants were asked to explain their preferences.
C. Some of the choices made by participants were altered.
D. The participants were influenced by each other’s choices.
E. Percentage results were surprisingly low.
Questions 39 and 40
Choose TWO letters, A-E. Write your answers in boxes 39-40 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO statements are true for the psychology experiment conducted by Merckelbach, Jelicic, and Pieters?
A. The participants had to select their two most common symptoms.
B. The participants gave each symptom a 1-5 rating.
C. Shyness proved to be the most highly rated symptom.
D. The participants changed their minds about some of their ratings.
E. The researchers focused on the strength and regularity of symptoms.

When conversations flow

We spend a large part of our daily life talking with other people and, consequently, we are very accustomed to the art of conversing. But why do we feel comfortable in conversations that have flow, but get nervous and distressed when a conversation is interrupted by unexpected silences? To answer this question we will first look at some of the effects of conversational flow. Then we will explain how flow can serve different social needs.
The positive consequences of conversational flow show some similarities with the effects of ‘processing fluency’. Research has shown that processing fluency – the ease with which people process information – influences peoples’ judgments across a broad range of social dimensions. For instance, people feel that when something is easily processed, it is more true or accurate. Moreover, they have more confidence in their judgments regarding information that came to them fluently, and they like things that are easy to process more than things that are difficult to process. Research indicates that a speaker is judged to be more knowledgeable when they answer questions instantly; responding with disfluent speech markers such as ‘uh’ or ‘urn or simply remaining silent for a moment too long can destroy that positive image.
One of the social needs addressed by conversational flow is the human need for ‘synchrony’ – to be ‘in sync’ or in harmony with one another. Many studies have shown how people attempt to synchronize with their partners, by coordinating their behavior. This interpersonal coordination underlies a wide array of human activities, ranging from more complicated ones like ballroom dancing to simply walking or talking with friends.
In conversations, interpersonal coordination is found when people adjust the duration of their utterances and their speech rate to one another so that they can enable turn-taking to occur, without talking over each other or experiencing awkward silences. Since people are very welltrained in having conversations, they are often able to take turns within milliseconds, resulting in a conversational flow of smoothly meshed behaviors. A lack of flow is characterized by interruptions, simultaneous speech or mutual silences. Avoiding these features is important for defining and maintaining interpersonal relationships.
The need to belong has been identified as one of the most basic of human motivations and plays a role in many human behaviors. That conversational flow is related to belonging may be most easily illustrated by the consequences of flow disruptions. What happens when the positive experience of flow is disrupted by, for instance, a brief silence? We all know that silences can be pretty awkward, and research shows that even short disruptions in conversational flow can lead to a sharp rise in distress levels. In movies, silences are often used to signal noncompliance or confrontation (Piazza, 2006). Some researchers even argue that ‘silencing someone’ is one of the most serious forms of exclusion. Group membership is of elementary importance to our wellbeing and because humans are very sensitive to signals of exclusion, a silence is generally taken as a sign of rejection. In this way, a lack of flow in a conversation may signal that our relationship is not as solid as we thought it was.
Another aspect of synchrony is that people often try to validate their opinions to those of others. That is, people like to see others as having similar ideas or worldviews as they have themselves, because this informs people that they are correct and their worldviews are justified. One way in which people can justify their worldviews is by assuming that, as long as their conversations run smoothly, their interaction partners probably agree with them. This idea was tested by researchers using video observations. Participants imagined being one out of three people in a video clip who had either a fluent conversation or a conversation in which flow was disrupted by a brief silence. Except for the silence, the videos were identical. After watching the video, participants were asked to what extent the people in the video agreed with each other. Participants who watched the fluent conversation rated agreement to be higher than participants watching the conversation that was disrupted by a silence, even though participants were not consciously aware of the disruption. It appears that the subjective feeling of being out of sync informs people of possible disagreements, regardless of the content of the conversation.
Because people are generally so well- trained in having smooth conversations, any disruption of this flow indicates that something is wrong, either interpersonally or within the group as a whole. Consequently, people who do not talk very easily may be incorrectly understood as being less agreeable than those who have no difficulty keeping up a conversation. On a societal level, one could even imagine that a lack of conversational flow may hamper the integration of immigrants who have not completely mastered the language of their new country yet. In a similar sense, the ever- increasing number of online conversations may be disrupted by misinterpretations and anxiety that are produced by insuperable delays in the Internet connection. Keeping in mind the effects of conversational flow for feelings of belonging and validation may help one to be prepared to avoid such misunderstandings in future conversations.

Questions 27-32
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the text? In boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet, write:
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
27. Conversation occupies much of our time.
28. People assess information according to how readily they can understand it.
29. A quick response to a question is thought to show a lack of knowledge.
30. Video observations have often been used to assess conversational flow.
31. People who talk less often have clearer ideas than those who talk a lot.
32. Delays in online chat fail to have the same negative effect as disruptions that occur in natural conversation.
Questions 33-40
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 33-40 on your answer sheet.

Synchrony

There is a human desire to co-ordinate (33)……………………….in an effort to be ‘in harmony’. This co-ordination can be seen in conversations when speakers alter the speed and extent of their speech in order to facilitate (34)……………………. This is often achieved within milliseconds: only tiny pauses take place when a conversation flows; when it doesn’t, there are (35)…………………….. and silences, or people talk at the same time.

Our desire to (36)……………………………. Is also an important element of conversation flow. According to research, our (37)……………….. increase even if silences are brief. Humans have a basic need to be part of a group, and they experience a sense of (38)……………………………. if silences exclude them.
People also attempt to co-ordinate their opinions in conversation. In an experiment, participants’ judgement of the overall (39)………………………………. among speakers was tested using videos of a fluent and a slightly disrupted conversation. The results showed that the (40)………………………………..of the speakers’ discussion was less important than the perceived synchrony of the speakers.

LEFT OR RIGHT?

An overview of some research into lateralization: the dominance of one side of the body over the other

A. Creatures across the animal kingdom have a preference for one foot, eye or even antenna. The cause of this trait, called lateralisation, is fairly simple: one side of the brain, which generally controls the opposite side of the body, is more dominant than the other when processing certain tasks. This does, on some occasions, let the animal down, such as when a toad fails to escape from a snake approaching from the right, just because it’s right eye is worse at spotting danger than its left. So why would animals evolve a characteristic that seems to endanger them?

B. For many years it was assumed that lateralisation was a uniquely human trait, but this notion rapidly fell apart as researchers started uncovering evidence of lateralisation in all sorts of animals. For example, In the 1970s. Lesley Rogers, now at the University of New England in Australia, was studying memory and learning in chicks.
She had been injecting a chemical into chicks’ brains to stop them learning how to spot grains of food among distracting pebbles, and was surprised to observe that the chemical only worked when applied to the left hemisphere of the brain. That strongly suggested that the right side of the chicks brain played little or no role in the learning of such behaviours. Similar evidence appeared in songbirds and rats around same time, and since then, researchers have built up an impressive catalogue of animal lateralisation.

C. In some animals, lateralisation is simply a preference for a single paw or foot, while in others it appears in more general patterns of behaviour. The left side of most vertebrate brains, for example, seems to process and control feeding. Since the left hemisphere processes input from the right side of the body, that means animals as diverse as fish, toads and birds are more likely to attack prey or food items viewed with their right eye. Even humpback whales prefer to use the right side of their jaws to scrape sand eels from the ocean floor.

D. Genetics plays a part in determining lateralisation, but environmental factors have an impact too. Rogers found that a chick’s lateralisation depends on whether it is exposed to light before hatching from its egg – if it is kept in the dark during this period, neither hemisphere becomes dominant. In 2004, Rogers used this observation to test the advantages of brain bias in chicks faced with the challenge of multitasking. She hatched chicks with either strong or weak lateralisation, then presented the two groups with food hidden among small pebbles and the threatening shape of a fake predator flying overhead. As predicted, the birds incubated in the light looked for food mainly with their right eye, while using the other to check out the predator The weakly-lateralized chicks, meanwhile, had difficulty performing these two activities simultaneously.

E. Similar results probably hold true for many other animals. In 2006, Angelo Bisazza at the University of Padua set out to observe the differences in feeding behaviour between strongly- lateralized and weakly-lateralized fish. He found that strongly-lateralized individuals were able to feed twice as fast as weakly-lateralized ones when there was a threat of a predator looming above them. Assigning different jobs to different brain halves may be especially advantageous for animals such as birds or fish, whose eyes are placed on the sides of their heads. This enables them to process input from each side separately, with different tasks in mind.

F. And what of those animals who favour a specific side for almost all tasks? In2009,MariaMagat and Culum Brown at Macquarie University in Australia wanted to see if there was general cognitive advantage in lateralisation. To investigate, they turned to parrots, which can be either strongly right- or left-footed, or ambidextrous (without dominance). The parrots were given the intellectually demanding task of pulling a snack on a string up to their beaks, using a coordinated combination of claws and beak. The results showed that the parrots with the strongest foot preferences worked out the puzzle far more quickly than their ambidextrous peers.

G. A further puzzle is why are there always a few exceptions, like left-handed humans, who are wired differently from the majority of the population? Giorgio Vallortigora and Stefano Ghirlanda of Stockholm University seem to have found the answer via mathematical models. These have shown that a group of fish is likely to survive a shark attack with the fewest casualties if the majority turn together in one direction while a very small proportion of the group escape in the direction that the predator is not expecting.

H. This imbalance of lateralisation within populations may also have advantages for individuals. Whereas most co-operative interactions require participants to react similarly, there are some situations – such as aggressive interactions – where it can benefit an individual to launch an attack from an unexpected quarter. Perhaps this can portly explain the existence of left-handers in human societies. It has been suggested that when it comes to hand-to-hand fighting, left-handers may have the advantage over the right-handed majority. Where survival depends on the element of surprise, it may indeed pay to be different.

QUESTIONS 27-30
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below. Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27. In the 1970s, Lesley Rogers discovered that
28. Angelo Bisazza’s experiments revealed that
29. Magat and Brown’s studies show that
30. Vallortigara and Ghirlanda’s research findings suggest that

A. lateralisation is more common in some species than in others.

B. it benefits a population if some members have a different lateralisation than the majority.

C. lateralisation helps animals do two things at the same time.

D. lateralisation is not confined to human beings.

E. the greater an animal’s lateralisation, the better it is at problem-solving.

F. strong lateralisation may sometimes put groups of animals in danger.

QUESTIONS 31-35
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 31-35 on your answer sheet.

Lesley Rogers’ 2004 Experiment

Lateralisation is determined by both genetic and 31_____________ influences. Rogers found that chicks whose eggs are given 32_________________ during the incubation period tend to have a stronger lateralisation. Her 2004 experiment set out to prove that these chicks were better at 33________________ than weakly lateralized chicks. As expected, the strongly lateralized birds in the experiment were more able to locate 34 ________________ using their right eye while using their left eye to monitor an imitation 35_______________ located above them.

QUESTIONS 36-40
Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs, A-H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

36. description of a study which supports another scientist’s findings.

37. the suggestion that a person could gain from having an opposing lateralisation to most of the population.

38. reference to the large amount of knowledge of animal lateralisation that has accumulated.
39. research findings that were among the first to contradict a previous belief.
40. a suggestion that lateralisation would seem to disadvantage animals.