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  3. Science is an enterprise concerned with gaining information about causality, or the relationship between cause and effect. A sim

Science is an enterprise concerned with gaining information about causality, or the relationship between cause and effect. A sim

admin2012-11-11  101
问题    Science is an enterprise concerned with gaining information about causality, or the relationship between cause and effect. A simple example of a cause is the movement of a paddle as it strikes a ping-pong ball; the effect is the movement of the ball through the air. In psychology and other sciences, the word "cause" is often replaced by the term "independent variable". This term implies that the experimenter is often "free" to vary the independent variable as he or she desires (for example, the experimenter can control the speed of the paddle as it strikes the ball). The term "dependent variable" replaces the word "effect", and this term is used because the effect depends on some characteristic of the independent variable (the flight of the ball depends on the speed of the paddle). The conventions of science demand that both the independent and dependent variables be observable events, as is the case in the ping-pong example. In the case of biorhythm theory, the independent variable is the number of days that have elapsed between a person’s date of birth and some test day. The dependent variable is the person’s level of performance on some specified task on the test day. Notice that although the experimenter is not free to choose a birthday for a given individual, persons with different dates of birth can be tested on the same day, or a single subject can be tested on several different days.
   In order to predict the relationship between independent and dependent variables, many scientific theories make use of what are called intervening variables. Intervening variables are purely theoretical concepts that cannot be observed directly. To predict the flight of a ping-pong ball, Newtonian physics relies on a number of intervening variables, including force, mass, air resistance, and gravity. You can probably anticipate that the intervening variables of biorhythm theory are the three bodily cycles with their specified time periods. It should be emphasized that not all psychological theories include intervening variables, and some psychologists object to their use precisely because they are not directly observable.
   The final major component of a scientific theory is its syntax, or the rules and definitions that state how the independent and dependent variables are to be measured, and that specify the relationships among independent variables, intervening variables, and dependent variables. It is the syntax of biorhythm theory that describes how to use a person’s birthday to calculate the current status of the three cycles. The syntax also relates the cycles to the dependent variable, performance, by stating that positive cycles should cause high levels of performance whereas low or critical cycles should cause low performance levels. To summarize, the components of a scientific theory can be divided into four major categories: independent variables, dependent variables, intervening variables, and syntax.
Many theories for predicting the relationship between cause and effect ______.
选项 A、testify their complete conformity with general scientific principles
B、justify the identity of dependent, independent, and intervening variables
C、specify the time periods of bodily cycles in terms of psychological tests
D、verify their prediction by variables inconsistent with conventions of science
答案D
解析 这是一道细节题。文章第二段指出：为了预测自变量和因变量之间的关系，很多科学理论都使用了所谓的介入变量；为了预测乒乓球的飞行，牛顿物理学依赖大量的介入变量，包括力量、质量、空气的阻力以及重力；生物节律理论的介入变量就是特定时期内的三种人体循环。这说明，预测因果之间关系的理论通过介入变量证实了其观点。D说“通过与科学惯例一致的变量证实了其预言”，这与文章的意思符合。文中没有提到A、B和C。
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