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  3. When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a

When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a

admin2014-12-11  60
问题     When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong. Instead , the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, "Progress in Brain Research".
    Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer’s disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful. "It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing," said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. "It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind. "
    For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean, older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it. When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students.
    " For the young people, it’s as if the distraction never happened," said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. "But for older adults, because they’ve retained all this extra data, they’re now suddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they’ve soaked up from one situation to another. "
    Such tendencies can yield big advantages in the real world, where it is not always clear what information is important, or will become important. A seemingly irrelevant point or suggestion in a memo can take on new meaning if the original plan changes. Or extra details that stole your attention, like others’ yawning and fidgeting, may help you assess the speaker’s real impact.
The text intends to tell us that______.
选项 A、a brain with disease is a brain with wisdom
B、an older brain may be a wiser brain
C、brains do deteriorate with age
D、how an older brain processes information
答案B
解析 文章的主旨一般根据文章各段的中心句得出。中心句一般出现在各段的首句或末句，或者如果段落第二句有强转折关系的话，中心句会在转折关系连词之后。另外，还有一种判断主旨的解题思路就是观察题干法。出题人所设置的题干一般围绕各段的中心，因此可以通过浏览出题人所设置的题干了解文章的主旨。
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