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  3. To call someone bird-brained in English means you think that person is silly or stupid. But will this description soon disappear

To call someone bird-brained in English means you think that person is silly or stupid. But will this description soon disappear

admin2017-03-25  82
问题     To call someone bird-brained in English means you think that person is silly or stupid. But will this description soon disappear from use in the light of recent research? It seems the English may have been unfair in associating bird’s brains with stupidity.
    In an attempt to find out how different creatures see the world, psychologists at Brown University in the USA have been comparing the behaviour of birds and humans. One experiment has involved teaching pigeons to recognize letters of the English alphabet. The birds study in "classrooms", which are boxes equipped with a computer. After about four days of studying a particular letter, the pigeon has to pick out that letter from several displayed on the computer screen. Three male pigeons have learnt to distinguish all twenty-six letters of the alphabet in this way.
    A computer record of the birds’ four-month study period has shown surprising similarities between the pigeons’ and human performance. Pigeons and people find the same letters easy, or hard, to tell apart. For example, 92 per cent of the time the pigeons could tell the letter D from the letter Z. But when faced with U and V(often confused by English children), the pigeons were right only 34 per cent of the time.
    The results of the experiments so far have led psychologists to conclude that pigeons and humans observe things in similar ways. This suggests that there is something fundamental about the recognition process. If scientists could only discover just what this recognition process is, it could be very useful for computer designers. The disadvantage of a present computer is that it can only do what a human being has programmed it to do and the programmer must give the computer precise, logical instructions. Maybe in the future, though, computers will be able to think like human beings.
There are similarities in observing things by pigeons and humans______.
选项 A、because pigeons are taught by humans
B、because pigeons have brains more developed than other birds
C、because their basic ways to know the world are the same
D、because pigeons and humans have similar brains
答案C
解析 根据文中第四段的“The results of the experiments so far have led psychologists to conclude that pigeons and humans observe things in similar ways．This suggests that there is something fundamental about the recognition process．”可知，到目前为止，心理学家已从这些实验结果得到的结论是，鸽子和人类观察事物的方法相似。这表明，识别过程具有基本的因素。据此可知，鸽子和人类在观察事物方面相似是因为他们认识世界的基本方法相同，C项正确。
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