单选题 To function well in the world, people need a good sense of where their body is in space and how it's postured. This "position sense" helps us coordinate high-fives, boot a soccer ball or pick up the remote. But that doesn't seem to mean that our brains have an accurate sense of our body's precise proportions. A new study found that people tend to have rather inaccurate mental models of their own hands. When asked to estimate where the fingertips and finger joints of their hidden hands were, study volunteers were way off. But they were all incorrect in the same directions, guessing that their hands were both shorter and wider than they actually were. The findings come from a study led by Matthew Longo of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. "Our results show dramatic distortions of hand shape, which were highly consistent across participants," Longo said in a prepared statement. He and his co-author, Patrick Haggard, had subjects place their left hand on a platform (using different orientations in different groups), which was then covered with a board to obscure the hand. The subjects were asked to use their free right hand point with a stick to the location of each finger joint and fingertip of their left hand. The process was filmed and compared to before and after pictures of the hand. On average, the volunteers judged their hands to be 27.9 percent shorter and 69 percent wider than they were measure to be. Underestimation of each finger length, from the thumb to the little finger, increased by about 7 percent in each finger, rendering the little finger quite a bit littler than it really was. This trend "mirrors similar grades of decreasing sensory acuteness," the authors pointed out, and the results seem to back up models of the human body constructed from the amount of sensory cortex dedicated to various body parts. In these models the hands and face are disproportionately large in comparison to most of the body. But Longo and Haggard are still not sure why the brain has such a distorted perception of our hand proportions. Longo speculated that these disproportions might occur in other parts of the body as well. "These findings may well be relevant to psychiatric conditions involving body image such as anorexia nervosa, as there may be a general bias toward perceiving the body to be wider than it is," Longo said. "Our healthy participants had a basically accurate visual image of their own body, but the brain's model of the hand underling position sense was highly distorted. This distorted perception could come to dominate in some people, leading to distortions of body image."
单选题 It can be learned from the first paragraph that _____.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】解析:根据题干可直接定位到第一段。其中该段③句讲到,大脑似乎不能准确感知我们身体的精确比例。最后一句则提到大脑中关于双手的心理模型往往不准确(inaccurate mental models of their own hands),C项中的imprecise sense of their hand shape与此对应,意思基本吻合,故C项为本题答案。
单选题 In Longo's study, volunteers' estimations of hand shape _____.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】解析:根据题干中的Longo’s study可定位到文章第二段。该段①②句讲到,研究志愿者在看不见手的情况下估计指尖和指关节的位置时,错得很离谱,且错误的方向都是一致的,其中way off“错得厉害”和incorrect说明志愿者对双手形状的感知是不正确的,故选择D项而排除B项。
单选题 According to Paragraph 3, which of the following is true of Longo's study?
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】解析:第三段具体介绍了隆戈的研究。其中①句至③句描述研究的过程,④⑤句讲述研究的结果。最后一句说低估率从大拇指到小指每个增加7%左右(increased by...in each finger),A项“对大拇指的低估率要比小指小”符合文意,故为答案。
单选题 According to Longo and Haggard, the reason for inaccurate sense of hand shape is _____.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】解析:根据题干中的Longo and Haggard及选项内容可定位到文章第四段。该段接着上一段谈到的“大脑对手形状感知不正确”的研究结果,继续说明其反映出“触觉敏感度的递减有着相似的梯度”状况,以及似乎能够支持的某些想法。但该段最后一句讲到,隆戈和海嘉德还不确定导致大脑对手掌比例有如此失真感知的原因,D项的still unknown与该句中的are still not sure意思一致,故D项为答案。
单选题 Longo would most likely agree that_____.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】解析:根据题干中的Longo以及选项里出现的heathy people,dominant等词可定位到最后一段。该段①句便讲到,人们对手的比例感知错误也会发生在身体的其他部位,B项所说的imprecise sense of body proportions与该句意思吻合,而该段最后一句也提到一些人可能由于受到大脑对于手失真感觉的支配作用对身体也会有失真感。结合这两句,可以确定答案为B项。