首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
A Very Special Dog A)It is 8:15 a.m. A flight lands at Melbourne’s Tullamarine International Airport. Several hundred pieces of
A Very Special Dog A)It is 8:15 a.m. A flight lands at Melbourne’s Tullamarine International Airport. Several hundred pieces of
admin
2014-12-26
58
问题
A Very Special Dog
A)It is 8:15 a.m. A flight lands at Melbourne’s Tullamarine International Airport. Several hundred pieces of baggage are rushed from the plane onto a conveyor belt in the baggage reclaim annexe. Over the sound of roaring engines, rushing air vents and grinding generators, a dog barks. Florence, a sleek black labrador, wags her tail.
B)Among the cavalcade of luggage passing beneath Florence’ s all-smelling nose, is a nondescript hardback suitcase. Inside the case, within styrofoam casing, packed in loose pepper and coffee, wrapped in freezer paper and heat-sealed in plastic, are 18 kilograms of hashish.
C)The cleverly concealed drugs don’t fool super-sniffer Florence, and her persistent scratching at the case alerts her handler. Florence is one of a truly new breed: the product of what is perhaps the only project in the world dedicated to breeding dogs solely to detect drugs. Ordinary dogs have a 0.1% chance of making it in drug detection. The new breeding programme, run by the Australian Customs, is so successful that more than 50% of its dogs make the grade.
D)And what began as a wholly practical exercise in keeping illegal drugs out of Australia may end up playing a role in an entirely different sphere—the comparatively esoteric world of neurobiology. It turns out that it’ s not Florence’ s nose that makes her a top drug dog, but her unswerving concentration, plus a few other essential traits.
E)Florence could help neurobiologists to understand both what they call "attention processing", the brain mechanisms that determine what a person pays attention to and for how long, and its flip side, problems such as Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD). As many as 3 to 5% of children are thought to suffer from the condition in the US, where the incidence is highest, although diagnosis is often controversial.
F)The Australian Customs has used dogs to find drugs since 1969. Traditionally, the animals came from pounds and private breeders. But, in 1993, fed up with the poor success rate of finding good dogs this way, John Vandeloo, senior instructor with the Detector Dog Unit, joined forces with Kath Champness, then a doctoral student at the University of Melbourne, and set up a breeding programme.
G)Champness began by defining six essential traits that make a detector dog. First, every good detector dog must love praise because this is the only tool trainers have at their disposal, but the dog must still be able to work for long periods without it.
H)Then it needs a strong hunting instinct and the stamina to keep sniffing at the taxing rate of around 300 times per minute. The ideal detector is also fearless enough to deal with jam-packed airport crowds and the roaring engine rooms of cargo ships.
I)The remaining two traits are closely related and cognitive in nature. A good detector must be capable of focusing on the task of searching for drugs, despite the distractions in any airport or dockside. This is what neurobiologists call "selective attention". And finally, with potentially tens of thousands of hiding places for drugs, the dog must persevere and maintain focus for hours at a time. Neurobiologists call this "sustained attention".
J)Vandeloo and Champness assess the dogs’ abilities to concentrate by marking them on a scale of between one and five according to how well they remain focused on a toy tossed into a patch of grass.
K)Ivan scores a feeble one. He follows the toy, gets half-way there, then becomes distracted by places where the other dogs have been or by flowers in the paddock. Rowena, on the other hand, has phenomenal concentration; some might even consider her obsessive. When Vandeloo tosses the toy, nothing can distract her from the searching, not other dogs, not food. And even if no one is around to encourage her, she keeps looking just the same. Rowena gets a five.
L)A person’s ability to pay attention, like a dog’s, depends on a number of overlapping cognitive behaviours, including memory and learning—the neurobiologist’ s attention processing.
M)Attention in humans can be tested by asking subjects to spot colours on a screen while ignoring shapes, or to spot sounds while ignoring visual cues, or to take a ’vigilance test’. Sitting a vigilance test is like being a military radar operator. Blips appear on a cluttered monitor infrequently and at irregular intervals. Rapid detection of all blips earns a high score. Five minutes into the test, one in ten subjects will start to miss the majority of the blips, one in ten will still be able to spot nearly all of them and the rest will come somewhere in between.
N)Vigilance tasks provide signals that are infrequent and unpredictable—which is exactly what is expected of the dogs when they are asked to notice just a few odour molecules in the air, and then to home in on the source. During a routine mail screen that can take hours, the dogs stay so focused that not even a postcard lined with 0.5 grams of heroin and hidden in a bulging sack of letters escapes detection.
O)With the current interest in attentional processing, as well as human conditions that have an attention deficit component, such as ADHD, it is predicted that it is only a matter of time before the super-sniffer dogs attract the attention of neurobiologists trying to cure these conditions.
There are diversified methods to examine people’s attention like spotting colours instead of images or distinguishing auditory clues rather than seeing.
选项
答案
M
解析
根据关键词“spot colours”定位于M段第一句.“Attention in humans can betested by asking subjects to spot colours on a screen while ignoring shapes,or to spotsounds while ignoring visual cues.”题干意思是有很多种方法来测试人类的注意力。例如让他们辨识颜色而忽略形象,或者辨别声音而不是视觉。题干“auditory clues”(听觉线索)即原文sounds的同义转述,因此,正确答案是M。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/5Ym7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
EveryoneremembersthewhitewashingsceneinTheAdventuresofTomSawyer.Buthowmanyrecallthescenethatprecedesit?Havin
A、Ithasnotbeenverysuccessful.B、Ithaslongbecomeanewtrend.C、Ithasmetwithstrongresistance.D、Ithasattractedal
Welcome,Freshmen.HaveaniPod.A)Takingastepthatmanyprofessorsmayviewasabitcounterproductive,somecollegesanduni
Ifyou’reoneofthosepeoplewhotendstoputonweightaroundyourmiddle,whatdoctorscallan"appleshape"—whattherestof
HowCustomsWorkA)Oneofthelittleritualsallinternationaltravelersgothroughiscustoms.Tomostpeople,thisisjustano
HowCustomsWorkA)Oneofthelittleritualsallinternationaltravelersgothroughiscustoms.Tomostpeople,thisisjustano
HowCustomsWorkA)Oneofthelittleritualsallinternationaltravelersgothroughiscustoms.Tomostpeople,thisisjustano
Worldleadersneedtotakeactionontheenergycrisisthatistakingshapebeforeoureyes.Oilpricesare【C1】______anditlook
Atsomepointin2008,someone,probablyineitherAsiaorAfrica,madethedecisiontomovefromthecountrysidetothecity.T
A、Increasingfinesfortrafficviolation.B、Reducingtollsonhighways.C、Banningpublictransportpartially.D、Enlarginginsura
随机试题
甲公司为一家制衣公司,2021年计划销售增长率为25%,该增长率超出公司正常的增长水平较多,为了预测融资需求,安排超常增长所需资金,财务经理请你协助安排有关的财务分析工作,该项分析需要依据管理用财务报表进行,相关资料如下:资料一:30
工资支付保障制度是哪一确定工资法律途径的基本内容?()
影响企业成功开发新产品的因素有哪些?
Astudyofarthistorymightbeagoodwaytolearnmoreaboutaculturethanispossibletolearningeneralhistoryclasses.M
A.26%B.27%C.35%D.93%E.98%食物冷藏冷冻温度为0℃时,细菌的灭活率为
按照定额的编制程序和用途,建设工程定额可分为()。
习近平说“中国梦是民族的梦,也是每个中国人的梦。”为早日实现“中国梦”,我们一定要做到的三个“必须”有()。
Jeffhasthe______(习惯)oflisteningtomusicwhilereading.
随着科学技术的发展,人类已经制造出诸如醋纤维、基苯乙烯、合成橡胶等自然原本不存在的化合物,其数量已达数百万种。这一情况说明
下列选项( )不属于中国Internet互联管理单位。
最新回复
(
0
)