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  3. Mathematical ability and musical ability may not seem on the surface to be connected, but people who have researched the subject

Mathematical ability and musical ability may not seem on the surface to be connected, but people who have researched the subject

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问题     Mathematical ability and musical ability may not seem on the surface to be connected, but people who have researched the subject — and studied the brain — say that they are. Research for my book "Late-Talking Children" drove home the point to me. Three quarters of the bright but speech-delayed children in the group I studied had a close relative who was an engineer, mathematician or scientist — and four fifths had a close relative who played a musical instrument. The children themselves usually took readily to math and other analytical subjects — and to music.
    Black, white and Asian children in this group show the same patterns. However, looking at the larger world around us, it is clear that blacks have been greatly overrepresented in the development of American popular music and greatly under represented in such fields as mathematics, science and engineering.
    If the abilities required in analytical fields and in music are so closely related, how can there be this great disparity? One reason is that the development of mathematical and other such abilities requires years of formal schooling, while certain musical talents can be developed with little or no formal training, as has happened with a number of well-known black musicians.
    It is precisely in those kinds of music where one can acquire great skill without formal training that blacks have excelled—popular music rather than classical music, piano rather than violin, blues rather then opera. This is readily understandable, given that most blacks, for most of American history, have not had either the money or the leisure for long years of formal study in music.
    Blacks have not merely held their own in American popular music. They have played a disproportionately large role in the development of jazz, both traditional and modern. A long string of names comes to mind— Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin, W, C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker.. .and on and on.
    None of this presupposes any special innate ability of blacks in music. On the contrary, it is perfectly consistent with blacks’ having no more such inborn ability than anyone else, but being limited to being able to express such ability in narrower channels than others who have had the money, the time and the formal education to spread out over a wider range of music, as well as into mathematics, science and engineering.
    There is no way of knowing whether Duke Ellington would have become a mathematician or scientist under other circum-stances. What is clearer is that most blacks have not had such alternatives available until very recently, as history is measured. Moreover, now that cultural traditions have been established, even those black who have such alternatives available today, and who have the inborn abilities to pursue them, may nevertheless continue for some time to follow well-worn paths.
In this passage, the author tries to say that______.
选项 A、musical ability has no connection with mathematical ability
B、one’s ability mainly depends on formal education
C、blacks are so prejudiced that they seldom accept new things
D、blacks are more successful in music than in science because of various reasons
答案D
解析 本题为细节分析题。作者通过研究发现，数学和音乐能力有密切关系，因此，A选项错误。而音乐能力不需要或者很少的正规训练，因而不是能力主要依靠正规训练，B选项不准确。C选项内容文中并未提及。D选项符合原文意思，因此，D选项正确。
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