certain differences seem to be inherent in male and female brains: men are better at maintaining and dealing with mental images (useful in mathematical reasoning and spatial skills), while women tend to excel (擅长) at recalling information from their brain's files (helpful with language skills and remembering the locations of objects).

 many studies have looked for a connection between sex and the amount of mental decline (衰退) people experience as they age, but the results have been mixed.

some studies found more age-related decline in men than in women, while others saw the opposite or even no relationship at all between sex and mental decline. those results could be improper because the studies involved older people, and women live longer than men: the men tested are the survivors, "so they're the ones that may not have shown such cognitive decline," said study team leader elizabeth of the university of warwick in england.

 people surveyed completed four tasks that tested sex-related cognitive skills: matching an object to its rotated form, matching lines shown from the same angle, typing as many words in a particular category (范畴) as possible in the given time, e.g. "object usually colored gray", and recalling the location of objects in a line drawing. the first two were tasks at which men usually excel; the latter are typically dominated by women.

 

within each age group studied, men and women performed better in their separate categories on average. and though performance declined with age for both genders, women showed obviously less decline than men overall.

 

1. the underlined word in the second paragraph means_________.
   a. natural    

   b. great 

   c. obvious 

   d. absolute

2. according to the passage, which of the following can not be typed into the same category?
   a. cloud  

   b. sheep 

   c. trees 

   d. goose

3. which of the following statements is true according the article?
   a. men do better than women when it comes to learning english.
   b. women stand out at remembering people’s names.
   c. men excel at typing as many words in a particular category as possible in the given time.
   d. women excel at dealing mathematic problems.

4. one important factor that affects the correctness of the results is that _________.
   a. the old men tested may not have shown such cognitive decline
   b. people surveyed are all old
   c. people taking part in this test came from all over the world
   d. women live longer than men

5. the author aims to tell us that __________.
   a. women’s minds perform better than men’s
   b. men’s minds decline more with age
   c. everyone becomes a little more forgetful as they get older
   d. a survey on human’s mind decline was done recently

 

参考答案与解析：

1、答案为a。词意猜测题。男女大脑的思维在某些方面的差异是天生固有的。

2、答案为c。推理判断题。根据文章第五段可推断出选项中这类物体是以白色为限定范畴的，故选项c为答案。

3、答案为b。推理判断题。男性在推理和空间思维方面占优势，女性在提取大脑中储存的记忆信息方面占优势。故答案为b。

4、答案为a。细节理解题。根据文章第四段可知。文章只是说调查涉及到老年人，但并不都是老年人，故排除b。选项d不是造成调查结果不准确的原因。

5、答案为b。主旨理解题。根据文章第一段可知