Part 1
Questions 1-13 The Extinction of Cave Bear
The Extinction of Cave Bear
Hervé Bocherens, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Tubingen, Germany, says his colleagues and his research methods are a little "crude." He dissolves 30,000-year-old animal bones in hydrochloric acid, which is strong enough to burn through metal, soaks the bone solution in lye, cooks it at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and freeze-dries it until what’s left is a speck of powder weighing less than one one-hundredth of an ounce. The method may be harsh, but the yield is precious--the biography of a cave bear as told through its chemical components.
Bocherens is at the forefront of research on the bear, a European species that died out 25,000 years ago. People have been excavating cave bear remains for hundreds of years--in the Middle Ages, the massive skulls were attributed to dragons--but the past decade has seen a burst of discoveries about how the bears lived and why they became extinct. An abundance of bones has been found from Spain to Romania in caves where the animals once hibernated.
"Caves are good places to preserve bones, and cave bears had the good sense to die there," Bocherens says.
Along with mammoths, lions, and woolly rhinos, cave bears (Ursus spelaeus) were once among Europe’s most impressive creatures. Males weighed up to 1,500 pounds--50% more than the largest modern grizzly bears. Cave bears had wider heads than today’s bears and powerful shoulders and forelimbs. But the relationship between humans and cave bears has been mysterious. Were humans prey for the bears, or predators? Were bears the object of worship or fear?
Initially, cave bears shared the continent of Europe more than 100,000 years ago with Neanderthals, a primitive species of humans. Modern humans arrived in Europe about 40,000 years ago and were soon aware of the bears. They painted images of the animals on cave walls and carved their likeness in fragments of mammoth tusk. The walls of France’s Chauvet Cave are painted with lions, hyenas, and bears. Dating back 32,000 years, these are perhaps the oldest paintings in the world.
The painters weren’t the cave’s only occupants: the floor is covered with 150 cave bear skeletons, and its soft clay still holds paw prints. Most dramatically, a cave bear skull was perched on a stone slab in the center of one chamber, placed deliberately by some long-gone cave inhabitant.
"There’s no way to tell if it was just curiosity that made someone put a skull on the rock, or if it had religious significance," says Bocherens.
A Discovery in Germany
Another discovery, hundreds of miles to the east of Chauvet, would shed light on the relationship between cave bears and humans. The Swabian Jura is a limestone plateau in southwestern Germany that is riddled with caves. A steel gate guards the Hohle Fels cave from vandals and curiosity-seekers. Floodlights in the cave’s main chamber illuminate the ceiling, vaulted like a cathedral above 5,000 square feet of floor space.
Long ago, as shown by the bones and tools that archaeologists have found, cave bears and human beings sought shelter here from winter weather.
In 2000, University of Tubingen paleobiologist Susanne Munzel unearthed a bear vertebra with a tiny triangular piece of flint embedded in it. The flint was likely a broken spear point--hard evidence of a successful bear hunt 29,000 years ago. Munzel also found bear bones that had clearly been scraped by stone tools. Evidence for bears being a food source for early humans was shown by cut marks on skulls and leg bones where the flesh had been cut away. Many of the bones were from baby bears, perhaps caught while hibernating.
Why Did Cave Bears Go Extinct?
Cave bears disappeared not long after humans spread throughout Europe, and one theory is that hunting led to the bears’ extinction. Hervé Bocherens’ test tubes may hold the clues. Running his white powder through a mass spectrometer, he identifies different isotopes, or chemical forms, of elements such as carbon and nitrogen that reflect what the bears were eating and how quickly they grew.
After studying hundreds of bones from dozens of sites in Europe, Bocherens has found that cave bears ate mainly plants. This would have made bears particularly vulnerable to the last Ice Age, which began around 30,000 years ago. This Ice Age shortened or eliminated growing seasons and altered the distribution of plant species across Europe.
Cave bears began to move from their old territories, according to a DNA analysis of teeth found near the Danube River. The cave bear population there was relatively stable, with the same genetic patterns showing up generation after generation. But about 28,000 years ago, newcomers with different DNA patterns arrived--a possible sign of hungry bears suddenly on the move.
But changes in the climate can’t be solely to blame for the bears’ extinction. According to the latest study by Erik Trinkaus and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute, cave bear populations began a long, slow decline 50,000 years ago--well before the climate began to change.
The new study supports a different explanation for the cave bears’ demise. As Neanderthals and then a growing population of modern humans moved into the caves of Europe, cave bears had fewer safe places to hibernate. An acute housing shortage may have been the final blow for these magnificent beasts.
Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
1. Bocherens’ findings on cave bears involve measuring the length of complete bones.
2. Bocherens was the first person to conduct analytical research on cave bears in a laboratory.
3. Cave bears have been extinct for 25,000 years.
4. At one time, people thought the excavated remains of bears were those of dragons.
5. Modern grizzly bears are similar in size to cave bears.
6. Neanderthals understood cave bear behavior better than modern humans did.
Questions 7-13
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Research into the existence and disappearance of cave bears
Evidence from the Chauvet Cave in France
- Paintings on the walls include bears.
- Over a hundred 7 of cave bears together with paw prints were found on the floor of the cave.
- The 8 of a cave bear was found in a prominent position in the cave.
Evidence from the Hohle Fels Cave in the Swabian Jura in Germany
- Bones and tools found in the cave indicate it provided 9 for both bears and humans.
Susanne Munzel’s Findings
- A spear point in the vertebra of a bear indicates that a hunt had taken place.
- Marks on the bones of bears indicate the removal of flesh.
Hervé Bocherens’ Findings
- Isotopes from the bones indicate that 10 were the cave bears’ preferred food.
Factors Leading to the Disappearance of the Cave Bear
Climate Change
- The Ice Age changed vegetation growth in 11.
- Bears were forced to migrate.
- Support for the above explanation comes from a study of changes in the DNA in the 12 of the population of cave bears near the Danube River at this time.
Human Population Expansion
- Competition from Neanderthals and modern humans for caves may have reduced opportunities for cave bears to 13.
Part 2
Questions 14-26 The Purpose of Facial Expressions
The Purpose of Facial Expressions
Do facial expressions reflect inner feelings? Or are they social devices for influencing others?
A The use of facial expressions for measuring people’s emotions has dominated psychology since the late 1960s. This was when Paul Ekman of the University of California pioneered the idea that, by carefully measuring facial expression, he could evaluate people’s true emotions. Ekman carried out experiments in which people were asked to label photos of basic facial expressions such as a smile, frown or scowl with words for emotions. He found, for example, that a smile represented joy and a scowl represented anger. In fact, since the 1970s Ekman has dominated the field of emotion research with his theory that when an emotion occurs, a large number of electrical impulses also occur, creating specific facial expressions and other physiological changes, such as increased or decreased heart rate or heightened blood pressure.
B Many took Ekman’s work to imply that facial expressions precisely indicated people’s feelings. However, this theory has been attacked by a number of psychologists, such as Alan Fridlund of the University of California, who claim that there is no one-to-one correspondence between facial expressions and emotions. Expressions evolved to set off certain behaviors in other people, says Fridlund. So a smile may prompt people to approach, a scowl may warn them to stay away, and a look of sadness may elicit words of sympathy and reassurance. In other words, in Fridlund’s view, facial expressions are inherently social they involve not one, but two or more people. Even when people are alone they are holding a dialog with another person internally, or imagining themselves in a social situation.
C Thus Fridlund thinks of facial expressions as tools for influencing social interactions, a view which, he claims, enables us to begin predicting when certain facial expressions will occur. This in turn will allow more precise theories about social interactions. His studies find that expressions occur most often during pivotal points, the turning points in social interactions during greetings, social crises, or times of appeasement, for example. At these pivotal points there is an approach, or closeness, or more intimacy, and facial expressions, as well as gestures, open up the possibilities of various social interactions.
D Although much work on the emotions relies on a link between facial expression and emotions, psychologist James Russell, of the University of British Columbia, says there is very little evidence supporting such a connection. There’s some sense in which faces express emotion, but only in the sense that everything expresses emotion, says Russell, a long time critic of the expression-emotion link. Music does, posture does, words do, tone of voice does, your behavior does. The real question is, "is there anything special about faces? And there we really do not know much." What is more likely, argues Russell, is that facial expressions tell others something about a person’s overall mood and context, rather than provide details about specific emotions.
E Others, including Ekman, argue that the face can display information about emotions, but they admit that it is not reliable one hundred percent of the time. And those who only examine faces when trying to study emotion will jump to false conclusions. But according to Ekman, to say, as Fridlund does, that there is no connection at all between facial expressions and emotions is simply wrong. There is a link between facial expression and emotion, agrees developmental psychologist Linda Camras of DePaul University, but it’s not a one-to-one kind of relationship as many once thought! She believes there are many situations where emotion is experienced, yet no basic facial expression is displayed. And there are times when a facial expression appears with no corresponding emotion.
F Ekman’s theory states that if the emotion comes on slowly or is rather weak, the feeling might not be strong enough to trigger the expression. This would explain why there can sometimes be emotion without expression, he argues. In addition, cultural rules which determine when and whether people of certain cultures display emotional expressions can prevent this otherwise automatic process from being completed. Facial expressions evolved in humans as signals to others about how they feel, says Ekman. At times, though, it may be uncomfortable or inconvenient for us to let others know our emotions. But in the long run, over the course of evolution, it was useful to us as signalers: an angry look on someone’s face may be a warning that they are preparing to behave in an angry fashion.
G The area of dispute between Fridlund and Ekman draws attention away from their major areas of agreement, says Joseph Campos of the University of California. Indeed, he says, there is profound agreement that facial expressions, along with body posture and hand gestures, forecasts to outside observers what people will do. To say the face component of emotion is the center of study of the human being experiencing an emotion is like saying the only thing to study in a car is the transmission. Not that the transmission is unimportant, but it’s only part of an entire system.
Questions 14-18
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14. a recognition that facial expressions do not always provide a guide to feelings | |||||||
| 15. examples of ways that a person’s facial expression can affect others | |||||||
| 16. a reference to reasons for hiding emotions | |||||||
| 17. examples of times when facial expressions are used especially | |||||||
| 18. examples of changes inside the body when an emotion is felt |
Questions 19-23
Look at the following statements and the list of researchers below.
Match each statement with the correct researcher, A-E.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
List of Researchers
A. Paul Ekman
B. Alan Fridlund
C. James Russell
D. Linda Camras
E. Joseph Campos
19. Focusing on the face in researching emotions is similar to researching a large structure by looking at just one small unit of it.
19
20. Facial expressions developed in order to encourage other people to react in particular ways.
20
21. Although certain researchers have different opinions about various points, they share some important ideas.
21
22. Both emotion and expression can exist independently of each other in certain circumstances.
22
23. It cannot be proved that there is a connection between facial expression and real emotion.
23
Questions 24-26
Complete the sentences below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
24. In Fridlund’s view, a 24 on someone’s face may be intended to make someone come nearer.
25. According to Fridlund, when we are by ourselves we still use facial expressions because we are having a 25 with someone.
26. Fridlund considers facial expressions to be a basic human 26.
Part 3
Questions 27-40 Memory Decoding
Memory Decoding
Try this memory test: Study each face and compose a vivid image for the person’s first and last name. Rose Leo, for example, could be a rosebud and a lion. Fill in the blanks on the next page. The Examinations School at Oxford University is an austere building of oak-paneled rooms, large Gothic windows, and looming portraits of eminent dukes and earls. It is where generations of Oxford students have tested their memory on final exams, and it is where, last August, 34 contestants gathered at the World Memory Championships to be examined in an entirely different manner.
A In timed trials, contestants were challenged to look at and then recite a two-page poem, memorize rows of 40-digit numbers, recall the names of 110 people after looking at their photographs, and perform seven other feats of extraordinary retention. Some tests took just a few minutes; others lasted hours. In the 14 years since the World Memory Championships was founded, no one has memorized the order of a shuffled deck of playing cards in less than 30 seconds. That nice round number has become the four-minute mile of competitive memory, a benchmark that the world’s best "mental athletes," as some of them like to be called, is closing in on. Most contestants claim to have just average memories, and scientific testing confirms that they’re not just being modest. Their feats are based on tricks that capitalize on how the human brain encodes information. Anyone can learn them.
B Psychologists Elizabeth Valentine and John Wilding, authors of the monograph Superior Memory, recently teamed up with Eleanor Maguire, a neuroscientist at University College London to study eight people, including Karsten, who had finished near the top of the World Memory Championships. They wondered if the contestants’ brains were different in some way. The researchers put the competitors and a group of control subjects into an MRI machine and asked them to perform several different memory tests while their brains were being scanned. When it came to memorizing sequences of three-digit numbers, the difference between the memory contestant and the control subjects was, as expected, immense. However, when they were shown photographs of magnified snowflakes, images that the competitors had never tried to memorize before, the champions did no better than the control group. When the researchers analyzed the brain scans, they found that the memory champs were activating some brain regions that were different from those the control subjects were using. These regions, which included the right posterior hippocampus, are known to be involved in visual memory and spatial navigation.
C It might seem odd that the memory contestants would use visual imagery and spatial navigation to remember numbers, but the activity makes sense when their techniques are revealed. Cooke, a 23-year-old cognitive-science graduate student with a shoulder-length mop of curly hair, is a grand master of brain storage. He can memorize the order of 10 decks of playing cards in less than an hour or one deck of cards in less than a minute. He is closing in on the 30-second deck. In the Lamb and Flag, Cooke pulled out a deck of cards and shuffled it. He held up three cards -- the 7 of spades, the queen of clubs, and the 10 of spades. He pointed at a fireplace and said, "Destiny’s Child is whacking Franz Schubert with handbags." The next three cards were the king of hearts, the king of spades, and the jack of clubs.
D How did he do it? Cooke has already memorized a specific person, verb, and object that he associates with each card in the deck. For example, for the 7 of spades, the person (or, in this case, persons) is always the singing group Destiny’s Child, the action is surviving a storm, and the image is a dinghy. The queen of clubs is always his friend Henrietta, the action is thwacking with a handbag, and the image is of wardrobes filled with designer clothes. When Cooke commits a deck to memory, he does it three cards at a time. Every three-card group forms a single image of a person doing something to an object. The first card in the triplet becomes the person, the second the verb, the third the object. He then places those images along a specific familiar route, such as the one he took through the Lamb and Flag. In competitions, he uses an imaginary route that he has designed to be as smooth and downhill as possible. When it comes time to recall, Cooke takes a mental walk along his route and translates the images into cards. That’s why the MRIs of the memory contestants showed activation in the brain areas associated with visual imagery and spatial navigation.
E The more resonant the images are, the more difficult they are to forget. But even meaningful information is hard to remember when there’s a lot of it. That’s why competitive memorizers place their images along an imaginary route. That technique, known as the loci method, reportedly originated in 477 B.C. with the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos. Simonides was the sole survivor of a roof collapse that killed all the other guests at a royal banquet. The bodies were mangled beyond recognition, but Simonides was able to reconstruct the guest list by closing his eyes and recalling each individual around the dinner table. What he had discovered was that our brains are exceptionally good at remembering images and spatial information. Evolutionary psychologists have offered an explanation: Presumably, our ancestors found it important to recall where they found their last meal or the way back to the cave. After Simonides’ discovery, the loci method became popular across ancient Greece as a trick for memorizing speeches and texts. Aristotle wrote about it, and later a number of treatises on the art of memory were published in Rome. Before printed books, the art of memory was considered a staple of classical education, on a par with grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
F The most famous of the naturals was the Russian journalist S.V. Shereshevski, who could recall long lists of numbers memorized decades earlier, as well as poems, strings of nonsense syllables, and just about anything else he was asked to remember. "The capacity of his memory had no distinct limits," wrote Alexander Luria, the Russian psychologist who studies Shereshevski. Shereshevski also had synesthesia, a rare condition in which the senses become intertwined. For example, every number may be associated with a color or every word with a taste. Synesthetic reactions evoke a response in more areas of the brain, making memory easier.
G K. Anders Ericsson, a Swedish-born psychologist at Florida State University, thinks anyone can acquire Shereshevski’s skills. He cites an experiment with S. F., an undergraduate who was paid to take a standard test of memory called the digit span for one hour a day, two or three days a week. When he started, he could hold, like most people, only about seven digits in his head at any given time (conveniently, the length of a phone number). Over two years, S. F. completed 250 hours of testing. By then, he had stretched his digit span from 7 to more than 80. The study of S. F. led Ericsson to believe that innately superior memory doesn’t exist at all. When he reviewed original case studies of naturals, he found that exceptional memorizers were using techniques -- sometimes without realizing it -- and lots of practice. Often, exceptional memory was only for a single type of material, like digits. "If we look at some of these memory tasks, they’re the kind of thing most people don’t even waste one hour practicing, but if they wasted 50 hours, they’d be exceptional at it," Ericsson says. It would be remarkable, he adds, to find a "person who is exceptional across a number of tasks. I don’t think that there’s any compelling evidence that there are such people."
Questions 27-31
The Reading Passage has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27. The reason why the competence of super memory is significant in academic settings | |||||||
| 28. Mention of a contest for extraordinary memory held in consecutive years | |||||||
| 29. A demonstrative example of extraordinary person did an unusual recalling game | |||||||
| 30. A belief that extraordinary memory can be gained through enough practice | |||||||
| 31. A depiction of the rare ability which assists the extraordinary memory reactions |
Questions 32-36
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage.
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Using visual imagery and spatial navigation to remember numbers are investigated and explained. A man called Ed Cooke in a pub, spoke a string of odd words when he held 7 of the spades (the first one of any cards group) was remembered as he encoded it to a 32 and the card deck to memory are set to be one time of an order of 33; When it comes time to recall, Cooke took a 34 along his way and interpreted the imaginary scene into cards. This superior memory skill can be traced back to Ancient Greece, the strategy was called 35 which had been a major subject was in ancient 36.
Questions 37-38
Choose TWO correct letters, A-E.
According to World Memory Championships, what activities need good memory?
Questions 39-40
Choose TWO correct letters, A-E.
What is the result of Psychologists Elizabeth Valentine and John Wilding’s MRI Scan experiment find out?