"Earworms", some people call them. Songs that get stuck in your head go round and round, sometimes for days, sometimes for months. For no clear reason you cannot help yourself from humming or singing a tune by Lady Gaga.

To a psychologist, the most interesting thing about earworms is that they show a part of our mind that is clearly outside of our control. Earworms arrive without permission and refuse to leave when we tell them to. They are parasites (寄生虫) living in a part of our minds.

If you have got an earworm you can suffer an attack of it simply by someone mentioning the tune, without having to hear it. This proves that earworms are a part of long-term memory. Humans have an "inner ear", for remembering phone numbers, for instance. When it gets infected with earworms, rather than review our plans for the day, or lists of things to remember, the inner ear gets stuck on a few short bars of music or a couple of phrases from a song. A part of us that we normally do not have to think about, that should just do what we ask, has been turned against us, upsetting us with a request that we never asked for. The mind is an inner world which we do not have complete knowledge of, or have control over.

Fortunately psychology can provide some advice on how to deal with an uncontrollable mind. Consider the famous "don’t think of a white bear" problem, which tells you to try not to think about white bears, or to do something else, to avoid both thinking of the white bear and not thinking of the white bear. For earworms, the solution may be the same. Our inner ear has become infected with an earworm. This is a part not under our control, so just sending in instructions to "shut up" is unlikely to be of much help (and has been shown to make it worse). Much better is to employ the inner ear in another task. If your mind is poisoned by Brittany Spears’ Toxic, for instance, then try singing Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You out Of My Head. Let me know if it works!

1.According to the passage, earworms are ______.

A.songs that keep going round in our mind

B.worms that live in a part of our brain

C.tunes by pop singers like Lady Gaga

D.parasites clearly under our control

2.Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A.Singing songs may get earworms out of your head.

B.Earworms are used for keeping long-term memory.

C.Humans do not have complete control over their mind.

D.You won’t suffer from earworms unless you hear the song.

3.What does “it” in the last paragraph refer to?

A.The instruction to shut up your mind.

B.“Don’t think of the white bear” problem.

C.Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You out Of My Head.

D.Using the earworm-infected inner ear in another task.

4.What is the passage mainly about?

A.The causes and influences of earworms.

B.What earworms are and how to deal with them.

C.How to clear earworms out of your head.

D.The relation between earworms and popular songs.

 

Have you ever heard an echo of your voice?

An echo is a reflected(反射)sound. Stand in a very large, empty hall with nothing on the walls. Then shout. The sounds you make will hit the walls and come back to you. The walls reflect the sounds. These reflected sounds are called “echoes”.

We can use reflected sound to make sound travel farther. Hold a watch about fifty centimeters from your ear. You cannot hear it. The sound of the watch travels a short way in all directions. It does not travel as far as your ear. You can make it travel to your ear by using a roll of cardboard(纸板筒).

Make the roll of cardboard about fifty centimeters long. Put one end over your ear and hold the watch at the other. Now you can hear the watch because the sound has not gone in all directions. It is reflected down the roll to your ear.

A megaphone(喇叭筒)works in the same way. It makes sound travel farther. It reflects the sound into a beam which can travel a long way. In the ship, the sailor uses the megaphone to make his voice travel. Without the megaphone, his voice cannot travel far.

We use reflected sound in many ways. We use it to measure the depth of the sea, for example. Among the animals, bats and whales use reflected sound to tell them where they are and what things are near them.

1.What is called “echo”?

A.Very loud voices.

B.Very loud voices that are made by man.

C.Very loud voices that are made by animals.

D.The sound that is made by man or animals comes back from some place.

2.We can hear our echoes if we     .

A.shout in a small room

B.shout in a large house full of things

C.shout in narrow valleys(山谷)

D.shout in the open air

3.Which is the right order of hearing our echo in a very large, empty hall?

a. We hear the reflected sound

b. The sound returns to us

c. The sound hits the walls

d. We make a sound

A.c, b, a, d          B.c, a, b, d           C.d, c, b, a           D.d, b, c, a

4.From the text we learn that __________ .

A.reflected sound is useful only to blind people

B.people haven’t made use of reflected sound yet

C.bats use reflected sound to fly and get food

D.whales don’t use reflected sound as they live in the sea

5.If you haven’t got a megaphone, ____ will help you to make your voice travel farther.

A.a long piece of wood                     B.a roll of cardboard

C.a thin thread                           D.a long piece of silk

 

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