阅读训练

　　Part Ⅳ Reading Comprehension(Reading in Depth) (25 minutes)

　　Section A

　　One of the most eminent of psychologists, Clark Hull, claimed that the essence of reasoning lies in the putting together of two "behavior segments" in some novel way, never actually performed before, so as to reach a goal.

　　Two followers of Clark Hull, Howard and Tracey Kendler, devised a test for children that was explicitly based on Hulll's principles. The children were given the task of learning to operate a machine so as to get a toy. In order to succeed they had to go through a two-stage sequence. The children were trained on each stage separately. The stages consisted merely of pressing the correct one of two buttons to get a marble; and of inserting the marble into a small hole to release the toy. The Kendlers found that the children could learn the separate bits readily enough. But they did not for the most part "integrate". They did not press the button to get the marble and then proceed without further help to use the marble to get the toy. So the Kendlers concluded that they were incapable of deductive reasoning.

　　The mystery at first appears to deepen when we learn, from anther psychologist, Michael Cole and his colleagues, that adults in an African culture apparently cannot do the Kendlers' task either. But it lessens, on the other hand, when we learn that a task was devised which was strictly analogous to the Kendlers' one but much easier for me African males to handle. Instead of the button-pressing machine, Cole used a locked box and two differently colored match-boxes, one of which contained a key that would open the box. Notice that there are still two behavior segments--"open the right match-box to get the key" and "use the key to open the box"---so the task seems formally to be the same. But psychologically it is quite different. Now the subject is dealing not with a strange machine but with familiar meaningful objects: and it is clear to him what he is meant to do. It then turns our that the difficulty of "integration" is greatly reduced.

　　Recent work by Simon Hewson is of great interest here for it shows that, for young children, too, the difficulty lies not in the inferential processes which the task demands, but in certain perplexing features of the apparatus and the procedure. Hewson made two crucial changes. First, he replaced the button-pressing mechanism in the side panels by drawers in these panels which the children could open and shut. This took away the mystery from the first stage of training. Then he helped the child to understand that there was no "magic" about the specific marble. The two modifications together produced a jump m success rates from 30% to 90% for five-year-olds and from 35% to 72.5 % for four-year-olds. For three-year-olds, for reasons that are still in need of clarification, no improvement--rather a slight drop in performance resulted from the change.

　　We may conclude, then, that children experience very real difficulty when faced with the Kendler apparatus; but this difficulty cannot be taken as proof that they are incapable of deductive reasoning.

　　47. Why did the Kendlers conduct the test described in the second paragraph?

　　48. The Kendlers trained their subjects separately in the two stages of their experiment, but not in how to ______ the two actions.

　　49. Michael Cole and his colleagues demonstrated that adult performance on deductive reasoning tasks depends on ______.

　　50. Who devised an experiment that investigated deductive reasoning without the use of any marbles?

　　51. ______ is cited as having demonstrated that earlier experiments into children's ability to reason deductively may have led to the wrong conclusion.

阅读答案

　　Part Ⅳ Reading Comprehension (Reading in Depth)

　　Section A

　　47. To test whether children are capable of deductive reasoning.

　　48. integrate/put together

　　49. features of the apparatus and procedure

　　50. Michael Cole and his colleagues.

　　51. Simon Hewson

　　Part Ⅳ Reading Comprehension(Reading in Depth)

　　Section A

　　47.从第二段的最后一句“So the Kendlers concluded that they were incapable of deductive reasoning.”和全文的最后一句“...but this difficulty cannot be taken as proof that they are incapable of deductive reasoning.”可以推断，三组实验都是根据文章开头所提到的心理学家 Clark Hull的理论。来验证实验对象是否有推理能力的。Kendler夫妇的实验对象是儿童。故可以回答为“To test whether children are capable of deductive reasoning.”。

　　48.结合第二段倒数第三句“But they did not for the most part‘integrates’.”和文章第一段“... the essence of reasoning lies in the putting together of two‘behavior segments' in some novel way，never actually performed before，so as to reach a goal.’”可见如果实验对象能把两个行为”“结合”起来去达到一个目的，就是具备了推理能力。所以培训实验对象的时候显然不会教他们如何去“结合”两个步骤。故正确答案为“integrate”或者也可以是“put together”。

　　49.文章第三段描述了Michael Cole和同事们的实验。当他们把实验设施换成实验对象所熟悉的东西时，他们的表现有所改善。可见影响实验结果的是实验设施的特点。封文章的第四段，作者对此做了总结：“Recent work by Simon Hewson is of great interest here for it shows that，for young children，too，the difficulty lies not in the inferential processes which the task demands，but in certain perplexing features of the apparatus and the procedure.”，作者明确指出无论实验对象是成人还是儿童，影响他们表现的是实验设施和过程的特点。因此，正确答案为“features of the apparatus and procedure”。

　　50.文章第二段描述Kendler夫妇的实验时作者提到：“The stages consisted merely of pressing the correct one of two buttons to get a marble;and of inserting the marble into a small hole to release the toy.”。第四段描述Simon Hewson的实验时提到：“Then he helped the child to understand that there was no“magic”about the specific marble.”，由此可见只有Michael Cole和他同事的实验没有用弹珠了。故正确答案是“Michael Cole and his colleagues.”。

　　51.第四段描述了Simon Hewson在前面两个研究者的实验的基础上改良了实验设施，对儿童进行了实验。结果证明五岁和四岁儿童的表现有大幅度提高。由此也证明，前面认为孩子不具备推理能力的实验结论是错误的。因此，本题的正确答案是“Simon Hewson”。