阅读训练
Passage 8

Taste is such a subjective matter that we don’t usually conduct preference tests for food. The most you can say about anyone s preference, is that it’s one person’s opinion. But because the two big cola (可乐饮料）companies —Coca-CoJa and Pepsi-Cola are marketed so aggressively, we’ve wondered how big a role taste preference actually plays in brand loyalty. We set up a taste test that challenged people who identified themselves as either Coca-Cola or Pepsi fans： Find your brand in a blind tasting.

We invited staff volunteers who had a strong liking for either Coca-Cola Classic (传统型）or Pepsi, Diet (低糖）Coke,or Diet Pepsi. These were people who thought they'd have no trouble telling their brand from the other brand.

We eventually located 19 regular cola drinkers and 27 diet cola drinkers. Then we fed them four unidentified samples of cola one at a time,regular colas for the one group,diet versions for the other. We asked them to tell us whether each sample was Coke or Pepsi； then we analyzed the records statistically to compare the participants’ choices with what mere guess-work could have accomplished.

Getting all four samples right was a tough test, but not too tough, we thought, for people who believed they could recognize their brand. In the end,only 7 out of 19 regular cola drinkers correctly identified their brand of choice in all four trials. The diet-cola drinkers did a little worse—only 7 out of 27 identified all four samples correctly.

While both groups did better than chance would predict, nearly half the participants in each group made the wrong choice two or more times. Two people got all four samples wrong. Overall, half the participants did about as well on the last round of tasting as on the first,so fatigue,or taste burnout, was not a factor. Our preference test results suggest that only a few Pepsi participants and Coke fans may really be able to tell their favorite brand by taste and price.

The statistics recorded in the preference tests show...

A. Coca-Cola and Pepsi are people’s two most favorite drinks

B. there is not much difference in taste between Coca-Cola and Pepsi

C. few people had trouble telling Coca-Cola from Pepsi

D. people’s tastes differ from one another
参考答案
【讲解答案】
B 推理题。从第四段的数据可发现:人们很难从味道上区分可口可乐与百亊可乐的差异，第五段 最后一段也同样证明偏好测验的数据表明只有少数爱好可口可乐时人才能从味道与价格上区分它 们，由此推断出可可乐与百亊可乐在味道上无多大区别。