Some students get so nervous before a test. They do poorly even if they know the material. Sian Beilock, a professor at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has studied these highly anxious test-takers. The students start worrying about the results. And when we worry, it actually uses up attention and memory resources（资源）.
Professor Beilock and another researcher, Gerardo Ramirez, have developed a possible solution. Just before an exam, highly anxious test-takers spend ten minutes writing about their worries about the test.
The researchers tested the idea on a group of twenty anxious college students. They gave them two short maths tests. After the first one, they asked the students to either sit quietly or write about their feelings about the upcoming second test.
Professor Beilock says those who sat quietly scored（得分） an average of 12% worse on the second test. But the students who had written about their fears improved（提高） their performance by an average of 5%. Next, the researchers used younger students in a biology class. They told them before final exams either to write about their feelings or to think about things unrelated（不相关的） to the test. Professor Beilock says highly anxious students who did the writing got an average grade of B+, compared to a B-for those who did not.
"What we showed is that for students who are highly test-anxious, and who'd done our writing intervention（干预）, all of a sudden there was no relationship between test anxiety and grades. They were performing just as well as their classmates who don't normally get nervous in these tests."
But what if students do not have a chance to write about their fears immediately before an exam? Professor Beilock says students can try it themselves at home or in the library and still improve their performance.
1．What do the students start worrying about before an exam?| A．Whether they can pass the exams. |
| B．What other students do during the test. |
| C．Whether they have remembered the materials. |
| D．What kind of problems they will meet on the test paper. |
| A．Making the students focused on the test. |
| B．Asking the students to sit quietly before the test. |
| C．Having the students write about their worries about the test. |
| D．Asking the students to direct the attention away from the test. |
| A．became less nervous before the test |
| B．were better at controlling their feelings |
| C．did worse than those who wrote about their feelings |
| D．did better than those who wrote about their feelings |
| A．writing about our worries before an exam can work a bit |
| B．we can only write about our worries right before an exam |
| C．the best place to write about our worries is in the test room |
| D．it doesn't matter where we write about our worries before an exam |
It probably won’t surprise you that teens are texting more than ever before. Experts show great concern for teen texting. Students might not learn correct grammar and spelling if they write a lot of text messages. Also all that texting takes away from hours that could be spent studying, exercising, pursuing hobbies, or talking with others face to face. Some kids even sleep with their phones beneath their pillows and wake up several times during the night to text.
Dr. Elizabeth Dowdell points out teens need to learn that they can—and should—turn off their phones sometimes. She and her team had two teenagers, Kenny and Franchesca, carry out an experiment. They should obey the rules: No phone for 48 hours. No computer or Internet either, unless it was for schoolwork. Would these two teenagers be able to do it?
“I think I’m going to feel really alone,” Kenny worried. Franchesca was nervous but brave. “I’m excited for the challenge,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.” They handed their phones to their mothers for safekeeping. The challenge was on.
The team caught up with Kenny and Franchesca after 48 phone-free hours. “Wow, it was pure suffering,” Kenny joked. “Though life with no phone wasn’t easy,” he admitted, “it had benefits. I felt less stressed because I didn’t have to be involved.” Sure, Kenny missed his friends, and he was sad at times. But he also felt relief from the constant texting. Instead of texting, Kenny went to the gym and caught up on schoolwork. He said that the first night he slept for 10 hours. He also spent time sitting with his family and talking. “I felt closer to my parents,” said Kenny.
Franchesca had an even happier result when she put away her phone. “I loved it!” she said. “I was going to the gym and hanging out with friends and playing basketball. I had a wonderful experience.” She slept better too, and she decided to continue the experiment for a while. “I think I’ll be so much smarter and healthier,” she explained. “Everybody in the world should try it.”
Kenny doesn’t plan to give up his phone again. But he now knows that he can live without it. “It was a reality check,” said the teen.
1．Experts are concerned about teens’ texting because it ______.| A．leads to learning disabilities |
| B．takes up their learning time |
| C．develops the habit of staying up late |
| D．causes misunderstandings with each other |
| A．Teens will live a healthier life without phones. |
| B．Expecting teens to live without phones is not realistic. |
| C．Experimenting with phone use is popular among teens. |
| D．Teens don’t realize how different their lives are without phones. |
| A．Only Kenny participated in physical activities. |
| B．Only Kenny spent time talking with his parents. |
| C．Only Franchesca benefited from a really good sleep. |
| D．Only Franchesca appreciated the freedom of having no phone. |
| A．Giving up Texting | B．Rules for Using Phones |
| C．Two Days with No Phone | D．Problems Caused by Texting |
While teenagers who are at risk of depression with risky behaviors — drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes and cutting classes often alert parents and teachers that serious problems are brewing, a new study finds that there’s another group of adolescents who are in nearly as much danger of experiencing the same mental symptoms.
These teens use tons of media, get insufficient sleep and have a sedentary(不爱活动的) lifestyle.
The study’s authors surveyed 15,395 students and analyzed nine risk behaviors, including excessive alcohol use, illegal drug use, heavy smoking and high media use.
The findings caught Carli off guard. “We didn’t expect that,” he says. “The high-risk group and low-risk group are obvious, but this third group was not only unexpected.
Carli says that one of the most significant things about his study is that it provides new early warning signs for parents, teachers and mental health-care providers.
| A．Because their behaviors are not usually seen as a red flag, these young people have been called the “invisible risk” group by the study’s authors. |
| B．Their aim was to determine the relationship between these risk behaviors and mental health issues in teenagers. |
| C．Of course, that may sound like a description of every teenager on the planet. |
| D．It was so distinct and so larger — nearly one third of our sample — that it became a key finding of the study.” |
| E．It was intended to dig into the reasons for depression. |
| F．And early identifications, support and treatment for mental health issues, he says, are the best ways to keep them from turning into full-blown disorders. |
| G．A teenager who suffers from a lack of sleep may have a high risk of depression. |
A teenage boy lived alone with his father. The two of them had a very special relationship. Even though the son was always “warming the bench”, his father was always in the stands cheering.
This young man was still the smallest in the class when he entered high school. But the son was determined to try his best at every practice. Throughout high school, he never missed a practice but still remained a benchwarmer all four years. His faithful father always in the stands, always with words of encouragement for him.
When the young man went to college, he decided to try out for the football team as a “walk-on”. Everyone was sure he could never make the cut, but he did. The coach admitted that he kept him on the roster(候选名单)because he always put his heart and soul into every practice and, at the same time, provided the other members with the spirit they badly needed.
This persistent young athlete never missed a practice during his four years at college, but he never got to play in the game. It was the end of his senior football season, and as he ran onto the practice field shortly before the big playoff game, the coach met him with a telegram.
The young man read the telegram and became silent. Swallowing hard, he whispered to the coach, “My father died this morning. Is it all right if I miss practice today?” The coach put his arm gently around his shoulder and said, “Take the rest of the week off, son. And don’t even plan to come back to the game on Saturday.”
Saturday arrived, and the game was not going well. In the third quarter, when the team was ten points behind, a silent young man quietly slipped into the empty locker room and put on his football gear(一套设备). As he ran onto the sidelines, the coach and his players were astonished to see their faithful teammate back so soon.
“Coach, please let me play. I’ve just got to play today,” said the young man.
Such cheering you’ve never heard!
| A．New employees. | B．Patients. | C．Tourists. |
| A．On Tye Road. |
| B．Next to a small garden. |
| C．In the main building. |
| A．It’s free of charge. |
| B．It’s open all day long. |
| C．It’s in the leisure center. |
| A．It saves time. |
| B．Its service is quite good. |
| C．It has good and cheap food. |
| A．She failed in an exam. |
| B．She can’t concentrate in class. |
| C．She is still confused about the task. |
| A．Preparing a play. | B．Setting up a club. | C．Going to parties. |
| A．Sunday. | B．Friday. | C．Saturday. |
| A．To support the woman. |
| B．To support people suffering from cancer. |
| C．To collect material for his cancer research. |
Five years ago, my husband and I bought a former farm. It’s a short ride from our Vancouver home but a world away. As we restore the land, I feel my well-being returning, but I think the farm is also working its magic on our son’s growing resilience (适应能力). Since Dev was 20, he has lived with mental illness. We have been on this journey with him from crisis to recovery.
It has taken a couple of years to clear the land, seed the lawn (草坪) and build garden beds. But we did it even as other parts of our life had come undone. The farm was holding our family together. We come over on weekends and holidays and have been planting.
Before he went to treatment, we planted a “guild” in the old apple farm.
The desire to recover this land has grown in me.
| A．We helped ourselves by helping others. |
| B．We also learned how to depend on others. |
| C．My son had great difficulty making a recovery. |
| D．I have seen this drive toward restoration in my son as well. |
| E．Just when it couldn’t get any worse, an unexpected light occurred. |
| F．During this time, Dev is concentrating on his own restoration process. |
| G．Its aim is to support the health of trees by grouping other surrounding components. |
People’s ability to remember fades with age — but one day, researchers might be able to use a simple, drug-free method to buck this trend.
In a study published on 22 August in Nature Neuroscience, Robert Reinhart, a cognitive neuroscientist at Boston University in Massachusetts, and his colleagues demonstrate that zapping(刺激) the brains of adults aged over 65 with weak electrical currents repeatedly over several days led to memory improvements that persisted for up to a month.
Using a non-invasive method of stimulating the brain known as transcranial alternating current stimulation (TACS), which delivers electrical currents through electrodes on the surface of the scalp, Reinhart’s team conducted a series of experiments on 150 people aged between 65 and 88. Participants carried out a memory task in which they were asked to recall lists of 20 words that were read aloud by an experimenter. The participants underwent TACS for the entire duration of the task, which took 20 minutes.
After four continuous days of this protocol, participants who received high-frequency stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex(背外侧前额叶皮质) had an improved ability to remember words from the beginning of the lists, a task that depends on long-term memory. Low-frequency zaps to the inferior parietal lobe(顶下小叶) enhanced participants’ recall of items later in the lists, which involves ‘working’ memory — the memory that allows the brain to store information temporarily. Participants’ memory performance improved over the four days — and the gains persisted even a month later. Those who had the lowest levels of general cognitive function before the study experienced the largest memory improvements.
“I was both impressed and surprised by this, by this paper,” says Simon Hanslmayr, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Glasgow, UK. He notes that along with other scientists, he has been sceptical about whether TACS can lead to meaningful changes in cognition. One issue has been that TACS devices generate electrical currents much weaker than those created by other methods of stimulating the brain, so it hasn’t always been clear whether they can transmit enough electricity to the brain to modify its function. However, the authors of this study convincingly showed that their protocol was linked to “consistent and quite strong improvements in memory”, Hanslmayr says.
1．What does the underlined word “buck” mean in paragraph 1?| A．Operate. | B．Destroy. | C．Follow. | D．Resist. |
| A．The experiments involved people aged over 65 and young students with good memory. |
| B．Participants were required to recall lists of 20 words when they read the words aloud. |
| C．Stimulating the inferior parietal lobe with low-frequency boosted the short-term memory. |
| D．High-frequency stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex improved ‘working’ memory. |
| A．The electricity sent by TACS is not sufficient to guarantee meaningful changes in cognition. |
| B．The people who have poor cognitive function experienced the least memory improvements. |
| C．TACS devices generate electrical currents as weak as those created by other methods. |
| D．TACS devices cannot ensure consistent and quite strong improvements in memory. |
| A．TACS can lead to meaningful changes in cognition. |
| B．TACS can help people with conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. |
| C．Brain stimulation leads to long-lasting improvements in memory. |
| D．Brain stimulation benefits those with poor cognitive function most. |
Recently, the laboratory of Sami El-Boustani, an assistant professor at the University of Geneva, has studied the role played by motivation in perception (感知) and decision-making. “We wanted to observe how sensory information sent by cortical neurons (大脑皮层神经元) is changed by the degree of motivation and to what extent the latter can have an effect on learning and performance in a decision-making task,” explains Sami El-Boustani.
The research team developed a behavioral pattern involving mice in a controlled water consumption condition. Researchers first trained these mice to respond to the stimulation of two whiskers (鼠须) (A and B) and to produce an action — licking a spout (舔壶嘴)— only for whisker A in order to obtain a drop of water. Following this training, these mice reacted mainly to the stimulation of whisker A. Finally, the researchers conducted these experiments at decreasing levels of thirst in order to vary the motivation of the mice to participate in the task.
In a state of great thirst, mice licked the spout randomly with great motivation. In a state of medium thirst, the choice of their action became ideal. They mainly licked the spout when whisker A was stimulated. Finally, when they were not very thirsty, their performance in the task dropped again. By observing the activity of neuronal populations responsible for perceptual decision-making in these mice, researchers discovered that high-motivation leads to the strong stimulation of cortical neurons, which causes a loss of accuracy in the perception of the stimulation. In contrast, in the low-motivation state, the accuracy of the sensory information was recovered, but the strength of the signal was too low for it to be sent correctly.
These results reveal that the level of motivation does not only impact decision-making but also the perception of sensory information, which leads to the decision. Researchers observed that mice understood the rule very quickly but could only express this learning much later, depending on a changed perception linked to their level of motivation. The research on the role of motivation in learning opens the way to new adaptive methods that aim to maintain the best level of motivation during learning.
1．Which aspect of motivation does the laboratory’s research focus on?| A．What role perception plays in motivation. |
| B．What effect learning has on motivation. |
| C．How motivation affects decision making. |
| D．How sensory information affects motivation. |
| A．The methods of conducting the experiment. |
| B．The limitations of the experiment. |
| C．The significance of the experiment. |
| D．The results of the experiment. |
| A．they were pushed by high motivation |
| B．the perception of stimulation was inaccurate |
| C．the signal was not strong enough |
| D．they were motivated to a medium degree |
| A．A lasting motivation can brings about a proper decision. |
| B．People have difficulty maintaining the best level of motivation. |
| C．Flexible methods are needed to maintain the right degree of motivation. |
| D．High motivation makes the brain process sensory information accurately. |
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