题目内容
ORTOTROT? I heard that word while studying in Australia. It is a local language for “Are you ready (to go)?”. And at Sydney Airport, I asked the way to the train station and a man told me“Go ask that “bloke” over there.” “Bloke” is used in Australia and refers to a person. “Day” and “die” sound almost alike and since “a”, “i” and “o” all sound almost the same, I have always told my Australian friends, jokingly, that they only need 24 letters, and not 26 like the rest of us do.
Australian English began to be different from British English in 1788 and has many words that some consider unique (独特的) to the language, such as outback, meaning a remote, sparsely-populated (人口稀少的) area. Early settlers from England brought other similar words, phrases and usages to Australia. “Bonzer”, which was once a common Australian word meaning “great” or “beautiful”, is thought to have been an American term. The American influence on language in Australia has come from pop culture, the mass media (books, magazines and television programmes) and the Internet. Australian English is most similar to New Zealand English for their similar history.
Words of Irish origin are used, some of which are also common elsewhere in Irish, such as “tucker” for “food”. Some native English words whose meanings have changed under Irish influence, such as “paddock” for “field”, which has exactly the same meaning as the Australian “paddock”are still in use.
1.According to the passage, we know Australian English .
A. has special characters
B. is a kind of old language
C. is very difficult to learn
D. is the same as British English
2.Why did the writer tell his Australian friends they only need 24 letters?
A. Because Australians never use “a” or “i”.
B. Because Australians speak very easy English.
C. Because there are 3 letters having similar pronunciation.
D. Because there are some different ways to call the same thing.
3.Australian English is most similar to New Zealand English because .
A. they learn from each other
B. they have similar history
C. the two countries have the same political system
D. people from the two countries often travel to each other’s country
4.The American influence on Australian English comes from the following EXCEPT .
A. pop culture B. the Internet
C. computer software D. the mass media
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Have you ever been so absorbed in a conversation at a party that you failed to notice that someone new is standing only six inches away from you, trying to get your attention? It’s possible that you were so distracted that you didn’t notice someone approaching you. But it’s also entirely likely that you were experiencing change blindness.
Change blindness is a phenomenon that occurs when a person is unable to notice visual changes in their environment, despite the fact that they are often rather obvious. In cases of change blindness, the person isn’t failing to notice small or insignificant changes, but will probably miss big changes, like someone standing next to them waving their hand.
Early experiments with change blindness focused largely on memory and perception when viewing pictures. For example, a person might be shown a photograph of a street scene in Egypt and told to memorize the image. Following that, they would be shown the same picture with certain elements added or taken away and asked to identify what’s different. Very often the individual could recall the larger aspects of the picture but couldn’t recognize the smaller changes.
In the 1990s, researcher Daniel Simons conducted a fascinating study into change blindness that many people find unbelievable. In Simons’ study, he asked participants to watch a video of a basketball being passed around between several people, with a particular focus on the basketball itself. When the experiment was over, Simons found that a large number of participants were so focused on watching the basketball being passed around that they failed to notice a man in a gorilla suit jumping around in front of the camera.
It’s important to note that the change in Simons’ video wasn’t subtle; the gorilla is very obviously taking up much of the frame. Simons concluded that participants were experiencing inattentional blindness, which is when a person fails to notice a major change because they are so focused on another task. In this case, because participants were asked to focus on the movement of the basketball, their brains prioritized that task in order to do it properly, thereby missing the other things happening in the video.
In the case of Simons’ study, participants engaged what’s referred to as attentional selection, which is when a person selects certain things to focus on in order to achieve a task and filters out anything that is unrelated to the objective.
There are a number of theories about what causes a person’s inability to recognize obvious changes in their environment, but most agree that the phenomenon is related to sensory processing. Broadly speaking, our brains have a limited capacity to detect and process everything in our environment. Instead, what the brain does is to choose certain things to process, evaluate, and store, which allows other things to be missed or filtered out.
In simple terms, change blindness has a great deal to do with where a person directs their attention. In the case of the gorilla and the basketball, people focused their attention almost exclusively on one thing, which caused them to miss other elements or changes. Given that attention is often at the root of change blindness, a person’s age or mental and physical health can influence how well they will notice changes in stimuli.
Change Blindness | |
1. of change blindness | Change blindness is a surprising perceptual phenomenon that occurs when a person recognizes minor changes in scenes while large changes go 2. . |
Experiments with change blindness | ●The main 3. of early experiments was memory and perception. ●Individuals were found to be4. at recalling the smaller details in the same picture previously shown to them. |
Research in the 1990s | ●In Simons’ study, participants were asked to pay special attention to the 5. basketball, during which time a man wearing a gorilla suit unexpectedly walked through the scene. ●Contrary to popular belief, with their attention fixed on the basketball, many participants reported that the “gorilla” 6. their notice. ●It is concluded that participants fail to recognize something big but unrelated to the objective when their brains are programmed to consider some task as a top 7. . |
8. of change blindness | ●The brain makes 9. about what to be dealt with because of its limited capacity. ●Although attention is closely10. to change blindness, age and health are other factors that play a role. |