阅读理解 Anecdotal evidence has long held that creativity in artists and writers can be associated with living in foreign parts. Rudyard Kipling, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Gauguin, Samuel Beckett and others spent years dwelling abroad. Now a pair of psychologists has proved that there is indeed a link.
As they report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, William Maddux of INSEAD, a business school in Fontainebleau, France, and Adam Galinsky, of the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, presented 155 American business students and 55 foreign ones studying in America with a test used by psychologists as a measure of creativity. Given a candle, some matches and a box of drawing pins, the students were asked to attach the candle to a cardboard wall so that no wax would drip on the floor when the candle was lit.(The solution is to use the box as a candleholder and fix it to the wall with the pins.)They found 60% of students who were either living abroad or had spent some time doing so, solved the problem, whereas only 42% of those who had not lived abroad did so.
A follow-up study with 72 Americans and 36 foreigners explored their creative negotiating skills. Pairs of students were asked to play the role of a seller of a petrol station who then needed to get a job and a buyer who would need to hire staff to run the business. The two were likely to reach a deadlock because the buyer had been told he could not afford what the seller was told was his minimum price. Nevertheless, where both negotiators had lived abroad 70% struck a deal in which the seller was offered a management job at the petrol station in return for a lower asking price. When neither of the negotiators had lived abroad, none was able to reach a deal.
To check that they had not merely discovered that creative people are more likely to choose to live abroad, Dr Maddux and Dr Galinsky identified and measured personality traits, such as openness to new experiences, that are known to predict creativity. They then used statistical controls to filter out such factors. Even after that had been done, the statistical relationship between living abroad and creativity remained, indicating that it is something from the experience of living in foreign parts that helps foster creativity.
Merely travelling abroad, however, was not enough. You do have to live there. Packing your beach towel and suntan lotion will not, by itself, make you Hemingway.
单选题 16.In the opening paragraph, famous names are cited to show the relationship between
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】事实细节题,考查例证细节。根据第一段的第一句话“民间传闻一直认为,艺术家和作家的创造力和旅居国外有关”,以及该段最后一句话“现在,两位心理学家已经证明,创造力和旅居国外确实存在联系”可得出答案。
单选题 17.It can be inferred from Paragraph 2 that
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】推理判断题。通读第二段可发现在实验中拥有海外生活经历的学生比没有海外生活经历的学生更好地完成了任务,这与B项符合。
单选题 18.The word "deadlock"(Line 4, Paragraph 3)most probably means
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】语义理解题。根据deadlock后面的原因状语从句“因为买者被告知他无法负担销售员被告知的最低价”可推测得出deadlock可能指学生无法达成一致意见,因此A项正确。
单选题 19.Dr Maddux and Dr Galinsky adopted statistical controls to
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】事实细节题。根据statistical control定位到第四段第二句话,后面的to filter out such factors表示使用统计控制的目的在于去除这些因素,而该段的第一句话即说明了这些因素是指能预测创造力的个人特征,这与A项符合。
单选题 20.In the last sentence of Paragraph 5, the author means that
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】观点态度题。从最后一段的第一句话“但是,仅仅出国旅游是不够的,你得在那里生活”可得知要培养创造力必须要在国外真正地生活,这与C项符合。