阅读理解 Louis Armstrong sang, "When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you." Romantics everywhere may be surprised to learn that psychological research has proven this sentiment to be true—merely seeing a smile (or a frown, for that matter) will activate the muscles in our face that make that expression, even if we are unaware of it. Now, according to a new study in Psychological Science, simply reading certain words may also have the same effect.
Psychologists Francesco Foroni from VU University Amsterdam and Gun R. Semin from the University of Utrecht conducted two experiments to see if emotion language has an influence on facial muscle activity. In the first experiment, a group of students read a series of emotion verbs (e.g., "to smile," "to cry") and adjectives (e.g., "funny," "frustrating") on a monitor, while the activity of their zygomatic major (the muscle responsible for smiles) and corrugator supercilii (which causes frowns) muscles were measured. The results showed that reading action verbs activated the corresponding muscles. For example, "to laugh" resulted in activation of the zygomatic major muscle, but did not cause any response in the muscles responsible for frowning. Interestingly, when presented with the emotion adjectives like "funny" or "frustrating" the volunteers demonstrated much lower muscle activation compared to their reactions to emotion verbs. The researchers note that muscle activity is "induced in the reader when reading verbs representing facial expressions of emotion."
Can this natural bodily reaction affect our judgments? In another experiment, volunteers watched a series of cartoons and were unconsciously shown emotion verbs and adjectives after each one. They were then asked to rate how funny they thought the cartoons were. Half of the participants held a pen with their lips, to prevent them from smiling, while the remaining participants did not have their muscle movement blocked. The results reveal that even when emotion verbs are presented unconsciously, they are able to influence judgment—volunteers found cartoons to be funnier when they were preceded by smiling verbs than if they were preceded by frowning-related verbs. However, this effect only occurred in the volunteers who were able to smile—volunteers who had muscle movement blocked did not show this relationship between emotion verbs and how funny they judged the cartoons as being.
The results of these experiments reveal that simply reading emotion verbs activates specific facial muscles and can influence judgments we make. The researchers note these findings suggest that "language is not merely symbolic, but also somatic," and they conclude that "these experiments provide an important bridge between research on the neurobiological basis of language and related behavioral research."
单选题 6.Louis Armstrong is cited in first paragraph to _____.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】事实细节题,考查引用细节。第一段开篇引用Louis Armstrong的歌词,然后第二句指出心理学研究已经证明歌词中所表达的情感传递确实存在,第三句再进一步指出有新研究证明仅仅阅读某些词汇也能产生同样的效果,这是文章的主题,由此可知,引用是为了引出后文的主题,故B项正确。
单选题 7.One is more likely to knit his eyebrows when presented with _____.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】事实细节题。题干问的是:当读到……的时候,一个人更可能皱眉(knit one's eyebrows)。从第二段第五句的内容可以推知,看到情绪动词比看到情绪形容词更能激活他们脸部的肌肉,由第二段第四句的内容可知,“笑”不会导致皱眉肌产生任何反应,所以B项最符合题意。
单选题 8.Francesco Foroni and Gun R. Semin have found in their second experiment that_____.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】事实细节题。根据题干中the second experiment定位到文中第三段。该段第六句破折号后面的内容表明,那些肌肉活动受限制的志愿者并没有表现出情绪动词影响对漫画有趣程度的判断,由此可知D项正确。
单选题 9.The word "somatic" (Para. 4) most probably means_____.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】词义理解题。通观全文可以发现,语言(情绪词语)会激活人的脸部肌肉活动,看到to smile这样的词语会激活人脸部的相应肌肉,可见探讨的是语言与人的身体的关系,故C项最符合题意。
单选题 10.What can we infer from the text?
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】推理判断题。根据文章第一段可知,仅仅看到一个微笑,我们的脸部肌肉会做出同样的反应:微笑。所以A项暗含了这个道理,故正确。