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  3. The gift of being able to describe a face accurately is a rare one, as every experienced police officer knows to his cost. As me

The gift of being able to describe a face accurately is a rare one, as every experienced police officer knows to his cost. As me

admin2014-01-13  53
问题     The gift of being able to describe a face accurately is a rare one, as every experienced police officer knows to his cost. As me Lancet put it recently, "When we try to describe faces precisely words fail us, and we resort to identikit(拼脸型图)procedures."     Yet, according to one authority on me subject, we can each probably recognize more than 1,000 faces, the majority of which differ in fine details. This, when one comes to think of it, is a tremendous feat. Though, curiously enough, relatively little attention has been devoted to the fundamental problems of how and why we acquire this gift for recognizing and remembering faces. Is it an inborn property of our brains, or an acquired one? As so often happens, the experts tend to differ.
    Thus, some argue that it is inborn, and that there are "special characteristics about the brain’s ability to distinguish faces". In support of this thesis they note how much better we are at recognizing a face after a single encounter than we are, for example, in recognizing an individual horse. On the other hand, there are those, and they are probably in the majority, who claim that the gift is an acquired one.
    The arguments in favor of this latter view, it must be confessed, are impressive. It is a habit that is acquired soon after birth. Watch, for instance, how a quite young baby recognizes his mother by sight. Granted that his mother senses help — the sound of her voice, his sense of smell, the distinctive way she handles him.
    But of all these, sight is predominant. Formed at the very beginning of life, the ability to recognize faces quickly becomes an established habit, and one that is essential for daily living, if not necessary for survival. How essential and valuable it is we probably do not appreciate until we encounter people who have been deprived of the faculty.
    This unfortunate inability to recognize familiar faces is known to all, but such people can often recognize individuals by their voices, their walking manners or their spectacles(眼镜). With typical human ingenuity many of these unfortunate people overcome their handicap by recognizing other characteristic features.
According to the passage, how important is the ability to recognize faces?
选项 A、It is useful in daily life but is not necessarily essential.
B、Its absence would make normal everyday life impossible.
C、Under certain circumstances we could not exist without it.
D、Normal social life would be difficult without it.
答案B
解析 细节事实题。根据原文第五段第二句中的is essential for daily living可知recognize faces是正常生活所必需的。选项B采用了absence…impossible双重否定的形式来表达。故答案为B。
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