单选题 "Most experiences of absent-mindedness-forgetting where you left something or wondering why you just entered a room—are caused by a simple lack of attention," says Schacter. "You're supposed to remember something, but you haven't encoded it deeply."
Encoding, Schacter explains, is a special way of paying attention to an event that has a major impression on recalling it later. Failure to encode properly can create troublesome situations. If you put your mobile phone in a pocket, for example, and don't pay attention to what you did because you're involved in a conversation, you'll probably forget that the phone is in the jacket now hanging in your cupboard. "You memory itself isn't failing you,"says Schacter, "Rather, you didn't give your memory system the information it needed."
Lack of interest can also lead to absent-mindedness. "A man who can recite sport statistics from 30 years ago," says Zelinski, "may not remember to drop a letter in the mail-box." Women have slightly better memories than men, possibly because they pay more attention to their environment or memory, and the memory relies on just that.
"Visual cues can help prevent absent-mindedness," says Schacter. "But be sure the cue is clear and available." If you want to remember to take medicine with lunch, put the pill bottle on the kitchen table don't leave it in the medicine box or write yourself a note that keep in a pocket.
Another common experience of absent-mindedness is that walking into a room and wondering why you're there.
Most likely, you were thinking about something else. "everyone does this from time to time," says Zelinski, "The best thing to do is to return to where you were before entering the room, and you'll likely remember./

单选题 The writer of the passage thinks that encoding properly is very important because ______.
A. it enables us to recall something from our memory
B. it slows down the process of losing our memory
C. it helps us understand our memory system better
D. it helps us to get back to the place where we were

单选题 One possible reason why woman have slightly better memories than men is that ______.
A. they rely more on the environment
B. they have a wider range of interests
C. they have an unusual power of focusing their attention
D. they are more interested in what's happening around them

单选题 Why can a note in the pocket hardly serve as a reminder?
A. It will easily get lost.
B. It is out of your sight.
C. It's not clear enough for you to read.
D. It might get mixed up with other things.

单选题 From the last paragraph, we can learn that ______.
A. the repetition might help improve our memory
B. if we focus our attention on one thing, we might forget another
C. if we forget things, we must return to the place where we were
D. we should think about something else while doing one thing

单选题 The passage is mainly about ______.
A. the memory system of human beings
B. a way of encoding and recalling
C. the causes of absent-mindedness
D. the impression of the environment on memory