GRE阅读练习每日一篇(十九)

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　　A Marxist sociologist has argued that racism stems from the class struggle that is unique to the capitalist system that racial prejudice is generated by capitalists as a means of controlling workers. His thesis works relatively well when applied to discrimination against Blacks in the United States, but his definition of racial prejudice as racially-based negative prejudgments against a group generally accepted as a race in any given region of ethnic competition, can be interpreted as also including hostility toward such ethnic groups as the Chinese in California and the Jews in medieval Europe. However, since prejudice against these latter peoples was not inspired by capitalists, he has to reason that such antagonisms were not really based on race. He disposes thusly of both the intolerance faced by Jews before the rise of capitalism and the early twentieth-century discrimination against Oriental people in California, which, inconveniently, was instigated by workers.

　　17. The passage supplies information that would answer which of the following questions?

　　What accounts for the prejudice against the Jews in medieval Europe?

　　What conditions caused the discrimination against Oriental people in California in the early twentieth century?

　　Which groups are not in ethnic competition with each other in the United States?

　　What explanation did the Marxist sociologist give for the existence of racial prejudice?

　　What evidence did the Marxist sociologist provide to support his thesis?

　　18. The author considers the Marxist sociologist s thesis about the origins of racial prejudice to be

　　unoriginal

　　unpersuasive

　　offensive

　　obscure

　　speculative

　　19. It can be inferred from the passage that the Marxist sociologist would argue that in a noncapitalist society racial prejudice would be

　　pervasive

　　tolerated

　　ignored

　　forbidden

　　nonexistent

　　20. According to the passage, the Marxist sociologist s chain of reasoning required him to assert that prejudice toward Oriental people in California was

　　directed primarily against the Chinese

　　similar in origin to prejudice against the Jews

　　understood by Oriental people as ethnic competition

　　provoked by workers

　　nonracial in character

　　By 1950, the results of attempts to relate brain processes to mental experience appeared rather discouraging. Such variations in size, shape, chemistry, conduction speed, excitation threshold, and the like as had been demonstrated in nerve cells remained negligible in significance for any possible correlation with the manifold dimensions of mental experience.

　　Near the turn of the century, it had been suggested by Hering that different modes of sensation, such as pain, taste, and color, might be correlated with the discharge of specific kinds of nervous energy. However, subsequently developed methods of recording and analyzing nerve potentials failed to reveal any such qualitative diversity. It was possible to demonstrate by other methods refined structural differences among neuron types; however, proof was lacking that the quality of the impulse or its condition was influenced by these differences, which seemed instead to influence the developmental patterning of the neural circuits. Although qualitative variance among nerve energies was never rigidly disproved, the doctrine was generally abandoned in favor of the opposing view, namely, that nerve impulses are essentially homogeneous in quality and are transmitted as common currency throughout the nervous system. According to this theory, it is not the quality of the sensory nerve impulses that determines the diverse conscious sensations they produce, but rather the different areas of the brain into which they discharge, and there is some evidence for this view. In one experiment, when an electric stimulus was applied to a given sensory field of the cerebral cortex of a conscious human subject, it produced a sensation of the appropriate modality for that particular locus, that is, a visual sensation from the visual cortex, an auditory sensation from the auditory cortex, and so on. Other experiments revealed slight variations in the size, number, arrangement, and interconnection of the nerve cells, but as far as psychoneural correlations were concerned, the obvious similarities of these sensory fields to each other seemed much more remarkable than any of the minute differences.

　　However, cortical locus, in itself, turned out to have little explanatory value. Studies showed that sensations as diverse as those of red, black, green, and white, or touch, cold, warmth, movement, pain, posture, and pressure apparently may arise through activation of the same cortical areas. What seemed to remain was some kind of differential patterning effects in the brain excitation: it is the difference in the central distribution of impulses that counts. In short, brain theory suggested a correlation between mental experience and the activity of relatively homogeneous nerve-cell units conducting essentially homogeneous impulses through homogeneous cerebral tissue. To match the multiple dimensions of mental experience psychologists could only point to a limitless variation in the spatiotemporal patterning of nerve impulses.

　　21. The author suggests that, by 1950, attempts to correlate mental experience with brain processes would probably have been viewed with

　　indignation

　　impatience

　　pessimism

　　indifference

　　defiance

　　22. The author mentions common currency in line 26 primarily in order to emphasize the

　　lack of differentiation among nerve impulses in human beings

　　similarity of the sensations that all human beings experience

　　similarities in the views of scientists who have studied the human nervous system

　　continuous passage of nerve impulses through the nervous system

　　recurrent questioning by scientists of an accepted explanation about the nervous system

　　23. The description in lines 32-38 of an experiment in which electric stimuli were applied to different sensory fields of the cerebral cortex tends to support the theory that

　　the simple presence of different cortical areas cannot account for the diversity of mental experience

　　variation in spatiotemporal patterning of nerve impulses correlates with variation in subjective experience

　　nerve impulses are essentially homogeneous and are relatively unaffected as they travel through the nervous system

　　the mental experiences produced by sensory nerve impulses are determined by the cortical area activated

　　variation in neuron types affects the quality of nerve impulses

　　24. According to the passage, some evidence exists that the area of the cortex activated by a sensory stimulus determines which of the following?

　　I. The nature of the nerve impulse

　　II. The modality of the sensory experience

　　III. Qualitative differences within a modality

　　II only

　　III only

　　I and II only

　　II and III only

　　I, II and III

　　25. The passage can most accurately be described as a discussion concerning historical views of the

　　anatomy of the brain

　　manner in which nerve impulses are conducted

　　significance of different cortical areas in mental experience

　　mechanics of sense perception

　　physiological correlates of mental experience

　　26. Which of the following best summarizes the author s opinion of the suggestion that different areas of the brain determine perceptions produced by sensory nerve impulses?

　　It is a plausible explanation, but it has not been completely proved.

　　It is the best explanation of brain processes currently available.

　　It is disproved by the fact that the various areas of the brain are physiologically very similar.

　　There is some evidence to support it, but it fails to explain the diversity of mental experience.

　　There is experimental evidence that confirms its correctness.

　　27. It can be inferred from the passage that which of the following exhibit the LEAST qualitative variation?

　　Nerve cells

　　Nerve impulses

　　Cortical areas

　　Spatial patterns of nerve impulses

　　Temporal patterns of nerve impulses

　　答案：17-27：DBEECADAEDB