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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.
The author’s research for his book "Late-Talking Children" showed him that______.
选项 A、mathematical ability and musical ability are closely related
B、bright but speech-delayed children favor analytical subjects
C、on the surface, mathematical ability and musical ability are not connected
D、children of different races differ slightly in their mathematical and musical abilities
答案A
解析 本题为细节分析题。根据文章第一段最后一句“The children themselves usually took readily to mathand other analytical subjects—and to music．”可知，作者通过研究发现．这些孩子欣然接受了数学和其他分析型科目以及音乐。由此可以推出，数学能力和音乐能力是有紧密联系的。因此，A选项正确。文中说四分之三的“bright but speech-delayed children”，因此，B选项扩大了范围，不准确。C选项与作者研究得出的结论正好相反。D选项文中并未提及，属无中生有。因此，A项为正确选项。
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