单选题 .  Questions 19 to 21 are based on the recording you have just heard.
4. 
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[听力原文]
   Geniuses are getting brighter. And at genius levels of IQ, girls are not as far behind boys as they used to be.
   SCIENCE has few more controversial topics than human intelligence—in particular, whether variations in it are a result of nature or nurture, and especially whether such variations differ between the sexes. The mines in this field can blow up an entire career, as Larry Summers found out a few years ago when he spoke of his hypothesis. What he found is that the mathematical aptitude needed for physics and engineering, as well as for maths itself, is rarer in women than in men. He resigned as president of Harvard University shortly afterwards.
   It is bold, therefore, of Jonathan Wai, Martha Putallaz and Matthew Makel, of Duke University in North Carolina, to enter the controversy with a paper that addresses both questions. In this paper, just published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, they describe how they picked out through nearly three decades of standardized tests administered to American high-school students to see what had been happening to the country's brightest sparks.
   They drew two conclusions. One is that a phenomenon called the Flynn effect applies in particular to the brightest of the bright. The other is that part, but not all, of the historic difference between the brainiest men and women has vanished.
   The three researchers drew their data from Duke University's Talent Identification Program, TIP, which is designed to pick out especially clever candidates early on: all the participants had scored in the top 5% of ability when confronted with exams designed for much older students. TIP, in turn, draws on three national exams: SAT, EXPLORE and ACT. Altogether, Dr. Wai, Dr. Putallaz and Dr. Makel looked at data from 1.7 million children.
   In the general population boys are well known to do a bit better than girls in moths. Girls, in turn, edge out boys on tests of verbal reasoning. The result is similar overall IQ scores. Among the best young mathematical brains, however, the equality is not appropriate. Here, boys do a lot better at moths than girls—but less better than they used to, as the researchers discovered.
   What did Larry Summers find out?
①从选项看,此题可能与男女智力比较有关。②录音开头提到Larry Summers提出一个假设,即物理学、工程学和数学本身都需要一定的的数学天赋,女性的数学天赋要比不上男性。C为该处录音的同义概括,与Larry Summer的假设相符,故为答案。
   录音并没有提及男女天才的数量,也未就这两者的数量进行比较,无从得知男性天才比女性的多,故A错误。录音开头提到,人类智能的差异到底是天生的还是由于后天培养的结果这类讨论都是有争议的话题.B“营养好的人更聪明”与录音内容不符。录音提到从总体而言,女性在文字推理能力测试上做得比男性好,但未提及男性在文学创作方面比女性差,故D错误。