Several recent studies have focused on how people think about ethics in a non-native language—as might take place, for example,

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问题     Several recent studies have focused on how people think about ethics in a non-native language—as might take place, for example, among a group of delegates at the United Nations using a lingua franca to hash out a resolution. The findings suggest that when people are confronted with moral dilemmas, they do indeed respond differently when considering them in a foreign language than when using their native tongue.
    Why does it matter whether we judge morality in our native language or a foreign one? According to one explanation, such judgments involve two separate and competing modes of thinking—one of these, a quick, gut-level "feeling," and the other, careful deliberation about the greatest good for the greatest number.【B6】____________This may seem paradoxical, but is in line with findings that reading math problems in a hard-to-read font makes people less likely to make careless mistakes.
    【B7】___________________
    As a result, moral judgments made in a foreign language are less laden with the emotional reactions that surface when we use a language learned in childhood.
    There’s strong evidence that memory intertwines a language with the experiences and interactions through which that language was learned. For example, people who are bilingual are more likely to recall an experience if prompted in the language in which that event occurred. Our childhood languages, learned in the throes of passionate emotion—whose childhood, after all, is not streaked through with an abundance of love, rage, wonder, and punishment?—become infused with deep feeling.【B8】______________
    If language can serve as a container for potent memories of our earliest transgressions and punishments, then it is not surprising that such emotional associations might color moral judgments made in our native language.
    The balance is tipped even further toward this explanation by a recent study published in the journal Cognition. This new research involved scenarios in which good intentions led to bad outcomes (someone gives a homeless person a new jacket, only to have the poor man beat up by others who believe he has stolen it) or good outcomes occurred despite dubious motives (a couple adopts a disabled child to receive money from the state).【B9】_________
    These results clash with the notion that using a foreign language makes people think more deeply, because other research has shown that careful reflection makes people think more about the intentions that underlie people’s actions rather than less.
    But the results do mesh with the idea that when using a foreign language, muted emotional responses—less sympathy for those with noble intentions, less outrage for those with nefarious motives— diminished the impact of intentions.【B10】______________
    [A]   By comparison, languages acquired late in life, especially if they are learned through restrained interactions in the classroom or blandly delivered over computer screens and headphones, enter our minds bleached of the emotionality that is present for their native speakers.
    [B]   Along with these differences, our moral compass also points in somewhat different directions depending on the language we are using at the time.
    [C]   When we use a foreign language, we unconsciously sink into the more deliberate mode simply because the effort of operating in our non-native language cues our cognitive system to prepare for strenuous activity.
    [D]   This  explanation  is  bolstered  by  findings   that  patients   with  brain  damage   to  the   ventromedial prefrontal  cortex,  an area that is involved  in  emotional  responding,  showed  a similar pattern of responses, with outcomes privileged over intentions.
    [E]   Reading these in a foreign language rather than a native language led participants to place greater weight on outcomes and less weight on intentions in making moral judgments.
    [F]   The research illuminates what is true for all of us, regardless of how many languages we speak: that our moral compass is a combination of the earliest forces that have shaped us and the ways in which we escape them.
    [G]   An alternative explanation is that differences arise between native and foreign tongues because our childhood languages vibrate with greater emotional intensity than do those learned in more academic settings.
【B6】

选项

答案C

解析 第二段意在解释为何使用不同的语言(母语和外语)会影响我们的道德判断。空格前已经提出了一种解释,因此空格处可能会对这种解释展开论述,也可能会提出第二种解释。空格后的This即指代空格处所填内容,由此可知,所填内容应与后面提到的研究发现(findings)相符。C提到更为谨慎的思考模式(the more deliberate mode),承接了上文(two…modes、the other,careful deliberation),补充完整空格前提到的解释;此外,C说的“费力使用外语会让我们的认知系统为处理复杂任务做好准备”与后文提到的研究发现“字体越难读,大脑越少犯错”道理相通。故答案选C。
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