单选题

Memory

It is difficult to imagine what life would be like without memory. The meanings of thousands of everyday perceptions, the basis for the decisions we make, and the roots of our habits and skills are to be found in our past experiences, which are brought into the present by memory.
Memory can be defined as the capacity to keep information available for later use. It not only includes "remembering" things like arithmetic or historical facts, but also involves any change in the way an animal typically behaves. Memory is involved when a rat gives up eating grain because he has sniffed (嗅出) something suspicious in the grain pile.
Memory exists not only in humans and animals but also in some physical objects and machines. Computers, for example, contain devices for storing data for later use. It is interesting to compare the memory storage capacity of a computer with that of a human being. The instant access memory of a large computer may hold up to 100,000 "words"--string of alphabetic or numerical characters ready for instant use. An average U.S. teenager probably recognizes the meaning of about 100,000 words of English. However, this is but a fraction of the total amount of information that the teenager has stored. Consider, for example, the number of faces and places that the teenager can recognize on sight.
The use of words is the basis of the advanced problem-solving intelligence of human beings. A large part of a person's memory is in terms of words and combinations of words. But while language greatly expands the number and the king of things a person can remember, it also requires a huge memory capacity, it may well be this capacity that distinguishes humans, setting them apart from other animals.

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】由文章第3段中的“…teenager probably recognizes…100,000 words…this is but a fraction of the total amount of information that the teenager has stored”，可知，电脑与青少年都有10万单词的记忆量，但对于青少年来说，这只占大脑信息存储量的一小部分，言外之意是人脑优于电脑，所以D正确。