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  3. What does a scientist do when he or she "explains" something? Scientific explanation comes in two forms; generalization and redu

What does a scientist do when he or she "explains" something? Scientific explanation comes in two forms; generalization and redu

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问题     What does a scientist do when he or she "explains" something? Scientific explanation comes in two forms; generalization and reduction. Most psychologists deal with generalization. They explain particular instances of behavior as examples of general laws. For instance, most psychologists would explain a pathologically strong fear of dogs as an example of classical conditioning. Presumably, the person was frightened earlier in life by a dog. An unpleasant stimulus was paired with the sight of the animal [perhaps the person was knocked down by an exuberant (充满 活力的) dog] and the subsequent sight of dogs evokes the earlier response—fear.
    Most physiologists deal with reduction. Phenomena are explained in terms of simpler phenomena. For example, the movement of a muscle is explained in terms of changes in the membrane (薄膜，隔膜) of muscle cells, entry of particular chemicals, and interactions between protein molecules within these cells. A molecular biologist would "explain" these events in terms of forces that bind various molecules together and cause various parts of these molecules to be attracted to one another.
    The task of physiological psychology is to "explain" behavior in physiological terms. Like other scientists, physiological psychologists believe that all natural phenomena—including human behavior—are subject to the laws of physics. Thus, the laws of behavior can be reduced to descriptions of physiological processes.
    How does one study the physiology of behavior? Physiological psychologists cannot simply be reductionists. It is not enough to observe behaviors and correlate them with physiological events that occur at the same time. Identical behaviors, under different conditions, may occur for different reasons, and thus be initiated by different physiological mechanisms- this means that we must understand "psychologically" why a particular behavior occurs before we can understand what physiological events made it occur.
Which of the following is most clearly analogous to the example in the passage of the person who fears dogs?
选项 A、A child chokes on a fishbone and as an adolescent is reluctant to eat fish.
B、A person feels lonely and after a while buys a dog for companionship.
C、A child studies science in school and later grows up to become a teacher.
D、A person hears that a snowstorm is predicted and in that evening is afraid to drive home.
答案A
解析 在文章第一段中，大多数心理学家是这样解释一个人对狗怀有恐惧感的：他在早期生活中被狗吓过，所以以后一见到狗就会感到恐惧。选项A的内容与文中的内容最相似，故选A。题中“analogous”一词为“类似的”的含义。
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