单选题 Why is it that most of us can remember our precise surroundings the moment that we first learned of John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination, the Challenger explosion or the fall of the Twin Towers, but not say, what grocery aisle we were standing in when the phone call came to remind us to pick up milk? What is it about the timing—or more specifically, the coincidence with intense experience—that seals in visual memories more effectively? That's the question that a new study from psychologists at the University of Washington set out to answer. The study, published online recently in the open-access journal PLoS Biology included a series of four experiments. In each experiment, which included distinct participants, Jeffrey Y. Lin and colleagues showed study subjects 16 photographs depicting familiar landscapes. The first time, participants merely looked at the images; the second time, they were also asked to focus on a number shown in the middle of the image; the third time, they also had to make note of an auditory cue as they looked at the images; and finally, they were shown images with a number in the middle, but told to ignore the number and focus only on the scene depicted. Researchers found that, when shown an image later and asked to recall if it had been among those they'd already seen, subjects' memory formation was consistently best when they had also been trying to concentrate on another task in both the second and third experiments, which involved viewing numbers or hearing audio tones while the images were presented, subjects formed clearer memories than in the first experiment—when they were simply instructed to look at the photos—and than in the fourth experiment—when they were shown numbers in the center of photos, but told to ignore them and focus on the images themselves. The findings suggest that it isn't the novelty of what we're seeing, but the experience that we are having while we look at something, that determines how well we store it away in our memories. Or, as the authors phrase it, the study results provide "evidence of a mechanism where traces of a visual scene are automatically encoded into memory at behaviorally relevant points in time regardless of the spatial focus of attention." When it comes to making memories, timing is of the essence.

单选题 The questions at the beginning of the text are intended to _____.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】解析：题干的questions指第一段前两句提出的问题，这两个问题可概括为“我们为什么能够清楚地记得某些情况，却不记得另一些情况?”和“什么样的时机会加深记忆?”。第一段末句则指出第二个问题是某项研究的研究话题，第二段紧接着介绍了这项研究，所以可推知，这些问题是为了引出本文要讨论的话题，由此可判断C项符合题意。

单选题 Which of the followings is true of the study mentioned in this text?

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】解析：四个选项均与研究的基本信息相关。第二段详细说明了实验进行的方式和内容，其中①句说到该研究包括四组实验，而根据第三、第四段的“In both the second and third experiments”“in the first experiment”“in the fourth experiment”等字眼可知，研究人员发现的结果(findings)是来自于这四组测验，C项所说的该研究建立在几组实验的基础上与文意相吻合，故C项正确。

单选题 The study shows that people remember a thing better when they_____..

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】解析：本题询问人们能更好记住事件的条件，这正是文中研究的结果，文中第三段为研究的结论，与本题相关。其中该段①句总结说到，研究发现如果看图的同时精力还集中于另一任务(concentrate on another task)，参与者的记忆往往更加清晰，接着②句进一步阐述此观点在这一研究中的具体表现和反映，即“同时需关注数字或记下声音提示的实验参与者记忆更清晰”，A项的观点与此不谋而合，故A项正确。

单选题 It is implied in Paragraph 4 that how well the memory is stored depends on _____.

单选题 Which of the following can best summarize the main idea of this text?

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】解析：这道题目需要通观全文，总结性的观点一般出现在文章的开头或者结尾。这篇文章的开头即引出了文章的主题，那么概括的部分应在文章的末尾，所以定位在最后一段。文中最后一句谈到“就能否形成记忆来说，时机是至关重要的”，A项中的memory formation对应该句中的making memories，而is critical to“是……的关键”则与文中的of the essence“非常重要的”相吻合，故A项为正确答案。