阅读理解 There is a lot to feel down about this month: the subprime mortgage crisis, stormy, unpredictable weather, rising gas prices, presidential primary free-for-alls. So, it would be easy to believe the theory set forth by Professor Arnall, a researcher from Cardiff University, that the third Monday of the month—a day he calls Blue Monday—will be our most depressing day of the year. Arnall bases his yearly prediction on a formula he developed which factors in the weather, consumer debt from holiday spending and failed New Year's resolutions and arrives at that conclusion that we will hit rock bottom on Monday the 21st. Aside from the fact that Arnall's theory has been discounted by many in the academic community, I have got a better way of finding the true nadir of depression: Look to our search behavior.
In the digital age we are likely to turn to search engines just as often as we would confide in friends and medical professionals to gauge our psychological state. If we think we are suffering from a real bout of the blues or a mental crisis, we are likely to Google the symptoms or find a chat group in the hopes of performing a self-diagnosis. In fact online searches "depression" are among the most popular searched word, sending traffic to the 5,900 sites that we track in the Hitwise Health and Medical category, but the peak is not in January. According to our internet behavior, our depression spikes reliably in mid-November every year, right in time for Thanksgiving, the launch of the holiday season.
To confirm this timing I took a look from a different perspective. If we are depressed, we are probably also seeking pharmacological help. By aggregating the traffic to the websites of the top antidepressants and charting visits to those sites over the last three years, a very interesting pattern emerges. The spike in traffic to the official websites for drugs like Lexapro, Prozac, Paxil and Cymbalta occurs in late October and early November, two weeks ahead of the height in searches on "depression". It is almost as if people anticipate their holiday depression and start shopping early for their drug of choice.
Another surprise lies in the demographics of visitors to antidepressant websites—they are not who you would expect. If visitors to Lexapro website, for example, are at all representative of the typical depressed individual, depression during November is an affliction primarily of the young and the old, but not of the middle-aged. The two age groups that account for the largest portion of site visitors are 18 to 24 and over 55. Visitors to Lexapro's site also tend to have average to above-average incomes: 51% of visitors come from households earning between $60,000 and $ 150,000 per year, while 20% come form households that earn over $150,000—a sample, perhaps, not of the depressed in general, but of those who can afford to seek treatment.
So, despite the failing economy, the storm of the century here in Northern California, a disappointing roster of presidential candidates and deciding that New Year's resolutions are not for me this year, I am feeling pretty good about things. If research date is any indication, I am not alone.
单选题 21.According to Paragraph 1, we can infer that______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】属信息推断题。选项A望文生义,文中虽然提到了今年让我们心情低落的事情有很多,但并没有表达出今年的人们较前些年更为失落,故选项A不合题意。选项B对应第一段第二句,是阿奈尔所提出的理论中的结论,故选项B不合题意。选项C与第一段第四句中作者陈述的事实完全相悖,该句说阿奈尔的理论遭到了质疑,故选项C错误。作者在第一段提到了阿奈尔的理论,虽然该理论并不为大众所接受,但作者以此为引子,提出了自己的理论,故可推断选项D符合题意。
单选题 22.The underlined word "gauge" in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】属词义推断题。根据做题提示和上下文,我们能够推测该词的意思为“估计、判断”,同选项A“appraise评估”的意思最相近;选项B“moderate”是“缓和”的意思;选项C“predict”是“预测”的意思;选项D“mimic”是“模仿,模拟”的意思。故正确答案为A。
单选题 23.By aggregating and charting visits to the antidepressants' sites, the author intends to ______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】属逻辑关系题。由题干关键词定位到文章第三段,该段第一句是主题句,同时也是作者所做这些工作的目的,即“to confirm this timing”,也就是得出一个关于最忧郁时间的结论。由此判断,选项A错误,所做这些并不是为了解释其原因。选项C也不正确,作者的目的并不是为了做比较,而是为了确认之前结论的合理性。选项D对应该段最后一句,只是作者从结论中推测出的一种现象,故不合题意。选项B与该段第一句对应,故B项为正确答案。
单选题 24.On which of the following would the author most probably agree?
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】属信息推断题。选项A断章取义,第二段第一句说“我们倾向于使用搜索引擎,就像过去我们向朋友和医师倾吐心事一样”,并不是说我们最好使用谷歌搜索,而不求助精神医生,故A错误。原文并没有阐述阿奈尔教授的理论受到忽视的原因,故选项B不可选。选项D是在假定依稀普兰官网的访问人群是所有典型抑郁患者的代表的情况下得出的一个条件性结论,并非事实,故选项D错误。作者在第四段的第四句着重阐述了网站访客分布和访客收入高低的关系,故选项C符合题意。
单选题 25.The most probable subject of the text would be______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】属主旨思想题。作者只是在第四段第四句陈述了网站访客分布和访客收入高低的关系,并不能得出选项A这一结论,故选项A错误。选项B只是文中一处细节的推论,并不能代表全文主要内容,故选项B错误。选项D犯了同选项B同样的逻辑错误,且过于绝对,故选项D错误。纵观全文,分析各段大意,以及根据全文的主题句——第一段的第四句,我们能够分析出选项C符合题意。