Question

People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in distinguishing facial expressions — and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.

Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow researcher, said that rather than scan evenly(均勻的) across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.

"We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions," Jack said. "Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, whereas Easterners favor the eyes and neglect (忽略) the mouth."

According to Jack and her colleagues, the discovery shows that human communication of emotion is more complex than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally recognizable cannot be used to reliably convey emotion in cross-cultural situations.

The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the eye movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 East Asian people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put them into categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry, or neutral. They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.

It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more errors than did Westerners. "The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural difference in facial expressions," Jack said. "Our data suggests that whereas Westerners use the whole face to convey emotion, Easterners use the eyes more and mouth less."

In short, the data show that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotion. From here on, examining how cultural factors have diversified these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotion. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.

1.What were the people asked to do in the study?

A．To make a face at each other.

B．To get their faces impressive.

C．To classify (分類) some face pictures.

D．To observe the researchers' faces

2.What does the underlined word "they" in Paragraph 6 refer to?

A．The participants in the study.               B．The researchers of the study.

C．The errors made during the study.           D．The data collected from the study.

3.In comparison(比較) with Westerners, Easterners are likely to         .

A．do translation more successfully

B．study the mouth more frequently

C．examine the eyes more attentively

D．read facial expressions more correctly

4.What can be the best title for the passage?

A．The Eye as the Window to the Soul

B．Cultural Differences in Reading Emotions

C．Effective Methods to Develop Social Skills

D．How to Increase Cross-cultural Understanding

 

Answer 1

【答案】

1.C

2.A

3.C

4.B

【解析】

試題分析：本文敘述了經過研究發現東方人與西方人看不同的面貌特征看面部表情是不同的，而西方人用全臉來表達情感,東方人多用的眼睛來表達情感和嘴使用更少。簡而言之,這個數據表明,面部表情并不普遍的人類情感的信號。

1.細節理解題。根據They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.故選C。

2.細節理解題。根據上下文可知指的是參與者，故選A。

3.細節理解題。根據Easterners use the eyes more故選 C。

4.標題歸納題。縱觀全文短文主要談及的是讀情感時的文化差異，故選B。

考點：文化類短文閱讀。

點評：文章標題是文章的點睛之筆。標題歸納題在英語閱讀理解題中屬深層理解題，它要求考生在通讀全文的基礎上，準確把握文章大意及作者的寫作意圖。一般說來，標題應該具有概括性、針對性、簡潔性三個突出特點。其中概括性，是指標題應最大程度地覆蓋全文，囊括文章的主要內容，體現文章的主題；針對性，是指標題的含義要直接指向文章的主要特點；而簡潔性，則是指標題應言簡意賅，能吸引讀者的注意力，并喚起讀者對文章的閱讀興趣等。