单选题 A YES = the statement agrees with the information in the passage B NO = the statement contradicts the information in the passage C NOT GIVEN = there is no information on this in the passage A step in the right direction A simple walk out in the fresh air often helps focus the mind and clear it of those everyday concerns. “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking,” observed Nietzsche. “Methinks the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow,” was how Henry Thoreau described an experience many of us have had, be it tackling challenging work or fretting over problems. AIf we still don’t know why walking inspires clarity and creativity, it’s because there are too many possible explanations, not too few. An evolutionary psychologist might say we’re designed to thrive outside, not at a desk; a scholar of the psychological phenomenon of “priming” might point to studies suggesting that high ceilings – and also, perhaps, the sky – prompt unrestrained thinking. A recent study offers more straightforward reasoning. In it, both children and adults performed a memory exercise better when walking than sitting. The researchers speculate that the physiological arousal of walking simply makes for better brain functioning, while the normally detrimental effects of multitasking are eliminated when the tasks are sufficiently different, drawing on separate “wells” of attention, rather than fighting over one. The greatest mental benefits of walking are explained not by what it is, but by what it isn’t. When you go outside, you cease what you’re doing, and stopping trying to achieve something is often key to achieving it. Stepping away from work combats the paralyzing effects of perfectionism, because when a task is suspended, the risk of failure is suspended, too; you’re thus freer to dream up insights. And in some hard-to-specify way, even the distractions of walking seem to help. The writer Ron Rosenbaum takes this to extremes, not just walking while thinking, but watching TV while writing. “I’m slightly ashamed to admit it, since it sounds like such a horrid violation of the writer’s solitude,” he once said. “But I have a theory of ‘competing concentration’… if you have something that you have to focus against... it forces you to concentrate.”