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  3. Brain-training software may be a waste of time. People who played "mind-boosting" games made the same modest cognitive gains as

Brain-training software may be a waste of time. People who played "mind-boosting" games made the same modest cognitive gains as

admin2015-07-31  37
问题     Brain-training software may be a waste of time. People who played "mind-boosting" games made the same modest cognitive gains as those who spent a similar amount of time surfing the web. "It didn’t really make any difference what people did," says Adrian Owen of the Medical Research Council Cognition, who tested brain-training software on volunteers recruited through a BBC television program.
    Owen and his colleagues asked 11 000 volunteers to take tests to measure their reasoning ability and verbal and spatial(空间的)memory. Participants then spent six weeks playing on one of two computer programs, or just surfing the web for pleasure. In one program, which imitates commercial brain-training software, the volunteers solved simple mathematics problems and puzzles that tested their memories. The other was designed specifically to boost cognitive abilities such as reasoning and planning.
    After six weeks, the participants underwent a second round of cognitive tests. Both groups who played the games made modest improvements, yet so did the web surfers. Skills learned via the programs didn’t transfer to the cognitive tests, even when they relied on similar abilities, says Owen. For instance, people who played a game in which they had to find a match for a briefly overturned card struggled at a similar test that used stars "hidden" in boxes. "Even when the tests were conceptually quite similar we didn’t see any improvement," says Owen. He concludes that brain-training software only makes people better at the specific tasks they have been practicing.
    Yet Klingberg, who founded a cognitive-training firm called Cogmed, is indignant at the conclusion that all brain training is bunk. The participants in Owen’s study didn’t practise for long enough and there was no quality control over what practice people did, he says. "Asking subjects to sit at home and do tests online, perhaps with the TV on or other distractions around, is likely to result in noisy data," he says. "This paper does in no way disprove that the brain is plastic or that cognitive functions can be improved by training." Owen counters that his team’s research took place in settings similar to the ones people are likely to practice in. "This is what people are doing. They’re sitting at home on their computers doing brain training."  
Which of the following best describes the passage as a whole?
选项 A、There is a doubt about whether brain-training software is effective.
B、We should concentrate on brain-training software in our daily life.
C、Brain-training software is useless to every person.
D、It is important to improve reasoning ability and spatial memory.
答案A
解析 主旨大意题。本文首先说明Owen对大脑训练软件产生怀疑，随后进行测试研究，得出大脑训练软件对大脑的提高不大这一结论。由此可见，全文都是在围绕大脑训练软件是否有效展开讨论，故正确答案为A)。
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