2. 外语
  3. According to a scientific study published in April, 2007, birds have shown they can plan for a future state of mind. Hiving up p

According to a scientific study published in April, 2007, birds have shown they can plan for a future state of mind. Hiving up p

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问题     According to a scientific study published in April, 2007, birds have shown they can plan for a future state of mind. Hiving up provisions for future use is not unique to humans. Birds, squirrels and monkeys do it. But the ability to think not just about tomorrow, but to realize how tomorrow’s feelings might differ from today’s, was thought to be the preserve of people. Recently researchers demonstrated that Western scrub-jays(灌木松鸦), a type of crow, can do it too.

    The researchers, led by Nicky Clayton of the University of Cambridge, wanted to test an idea proposed by Wolfgang Kohler, Norbert Bischof and Doris Bischof-Kohler, three German psychologists. The Bischof-Kohler hypothesis says that only humans can mentally separate themselves from what they are experiencing to conceive how they might feel about future events.
To test whether this is so, Dr. Clayton and her colleagues sought to tease apart scrub-jays’ momentary desires from their planning for future needs. They let the birds eat as much of one food as they wanted, exploiting a condition called specific satiety(饱足)-- once the birds are full of one food, they show strong preference for something different. They then offered the birds that same food or a second one to store for later.
    Initially the scrub-jays behaved as predicted, choosing to hive away the second food, which they had not just eaten. But minutes before allowing the birds to recover their storage, the researchers fed the birds to satiety with that second food — the one they had already stored. The birds changed their storing preferences on the very next trial. Even though they had just had their fill of the first food, they still store it, presumably because they thought it would be their preferred choice later.
    The finding matters because the birds seem to plan ahead for what they will want later, even though their choice conflicts with what they want now. It could prompt a reassessment of how animals perceive the world around them.
The purpose of the research conducted by Dr. Clayton and her team is to______.
选项
答案test the Bischof-Kohler hypothesis
解析 由线索词Dr．Clayton定位至第二段，文中说比斯克赫夫·柯和勒假想指出…，Clayton博士为了验证这一假想开始了实验，这也就是实验的目的。
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