阅读理解 Cultural Differences in Reading Emotions
People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in distinguishing facial expressions—and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.
Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow researcher, said that rather than scanning evenly (均匀的) across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.
"We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions, " Jack said. "Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, whereas Easterners favor the eyes and neglect (忽略) the mouth. "
According to Jack and her colleagues, the discovery shows that human communication of emotion is more complex than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally recognizable cannot be used to reliably convey emotion in cross-cultural situations.
The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the eye movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 East Asian people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put them into categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry, or neutral. They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.
It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more errors than Westerners did. "The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural difference in facial expressions, " Jack said. "Our data suggest that whereas Westerners use the whole face to convey emotion, Easterners use the eyes more and mouth less. "
In short, the data show that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotions. From here on, examining how cultural factors have diversified these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotion. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.
单选题 11.The discovery shows that Westerners______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】本题目考查研究发现的结果。文章首先指出科学研究的最新发现：东方人比西方人更难于读懂人的面部表情。之后更具体地介绍研究的结果及其研究过程，最后得出结论：文化差异丰富了理解情感的基本社会技巧。根据第三段第二句“Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure，whereas Easterners favor the eyes and neglect(忽略)the mouth．”可以得出答案。
单选题 12.What were the people asked to do in the study?
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】本题目问到该研究的研究对象被要求做什么。通读全文，可知文中第五段对此有所提及，即是将各种表情记录下来并进行分类。因此该题答案为C。
单选题 13.What does the underlined word "they" in Paragraph 6 refer to?
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】根据题目可快速定位到第六段第二句。联系上下文，结合语境，可判断出they指的是研究对象，故正确答案为A。
单选题 14.In comparison with Westerners, Easterners are likely to______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】本题目考查中西方人之间的对比。根据第六段第一句“It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more errors than Westerners did．”可得知，该题正确答案为C。
单选题 15.Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】将四个备选项与原文信息一一进行匹配。A选项提到中西方人读面部表情是不存在差别。而B选项提到东方人易于区分面部表情。而这两个选项与文章第一句的信息相违背，因此可以排除。C选项提到西方人在读表情时更注重唇部。这与第三段第二句信息不一致，因此错误。很明显，D选项为文章最后一段第一句的同义表达，因此为该题的正确答案。