【雅思阅读模拟】雅思考试阅读精选及答案详解（6）

北京雅思培训,雅思备考资料,雅思网课,雅思培训机构,雅思保分班,雅思真题,雅思课程

带来雅思阅读精选之"Can Scientists tell us: What happiness is?"。所有雅思阅读方法技巧都需要反复做题去巩固，自己不足的地方也只有通过做题才能显现。练习也是有技巧的，不能盲目瞎做。把每一次阅读练习都当做考试，时间一个小时，三篇阅读，没有手机，没有字典，没有参考资料，没有笔记。只有这样，在考场上才有可能在50分钟内做完题目(十分钟的誊写答案以及检查时间)。强势推广：雅思阅读精品资料，右手边戳链接→_→防脱发秘笈之——雅思阅读精读资料(广而告之，攒人品，爆高分)

题目答案在第二页，自行查阅。听说，每天练习一篇雅思阅读的小伙伴都心想事成了呢。

1.雅思阅读材料

Can Scientists tell us: What happiness is?

A Economists accept that if people describe themselves as happy, then they are

happy. However, psychologists differentiate between levels of happiness. The

most immediate type involves a feeling; pleasure or joy. But sometimes happiness

is a judgment that life is satisfying, and does not imply an emotional state.

Esteemed psychologist Martin Seligman has spearheaded an effort to study the

science of happiness. The bad news is that we're not wired to be happy. The good

news is that we can do something about it. Since its origins in a Leipzig

laboratory 130 years ago, psychology has had little to say about goodness and

contentment. Mostly psychologists have concerned themselves with weakness and

misery. There are libraries full of theories about why we get sad, worried, and

angry. It hasn't been respectable science to study what happens when lives go

well. Positive experiences, such as joy, kindness, altruism and heroism, have

mainly been ignored. For every 100 psychology papers dealing with anxiety or

depression, only one concerns a positive trait.

B A few pioneers in experimental psychology bucked the trend. Professor Alice

Isen of Cornell University and colleagues have demonstrated how positive

emotions make people think faster and more creatively. Showing how easy it is to

give people an intellectual boost, Isen divided doctors making a tricky

diagnosis into three groups: one received candy, one read humanistic statements

about medicine, one was a control group. The doctors who had candy displayed the

most creative thinking and worked more efficiently. Inspired by Isen and others,

Seligman got stuck in. He raised millions of dollars of research money and

funded 50 research groups involving 150 scientists across the world. Four

positive psychology centres opened, decorated in cheerful colours and furnished

with sofas and baby-sitters. There were get-togethers on Mexican beaches where

psychologists would snorkel and eat fajitas, then form "pods" to discuss

subjects such as wonder and awe. A thousand therapists were coached in the new

science.

C But critics are demanding answers to big questions. What is the point of

defining levels of happiness and classifying the virtues? Aren't these concepts

vague and impossible to pin down? Can you justify spending funds to research

positive states when there are problems such as famine, flood and epidemic

depression to be solved? Seligman knows his work can be belittled alongside

trite notions such as "the power of positive thinking". His plan to stop the new

science floating "on the waves of self- improvement fashions" is to make sure it

is anchored to positive philosophy above, and to positive biology below.

D And this takes us back to our evolutionary past. Homo sapiens evolved during

the Pleistocene era (1.8 m to 10,000 years ago), a time of hardship and turmoil.

It was the Ice Age, and our ancestors endured long freezes as glaciers formed,

then ferocious floods as the ice masses melted. We shared the planet with

terrifying creatures such as mammoths, elephant-sized ground sloths and

sabre-toothed cats. But by the end of the Pleistocene, all these animals were

extinct. Humans, on the other hand, had evolved large brains and used their

intelligence to make fire and sophisticated tools, to develop talk and social

rituals. Survival in a time of adversity forged our brains into a persistent

mould. Professor Seligman says: "Because our brain evolved during a time of ice,

flood and famine, we have a catastrophic brain. The way the brain works is

looking for what's wrong. The problem is, that worked in the Pleistocene era. It

favoured you, but it doesn't work in the modem world."

E Although most people rate themselves as happy, there is a wealth of evidence

to show that negative thinking is deeply ingrained in the human psyche.

Experiments show that we remember failures more vividly than successes. We dwell

on what went badly, not what went well. Of the six universal emotions, four

anger, fear, disgust and sadness are negative and only one, joy, is positive.

The sixth, surprise, is psychologist Daniel Nettle, author of Happiness, and one

of the Royal Institution lecturers, the negative emotions each tell us

"something bad has happened" and suggest a different course of action.

F What is it about the structure of the brain that underlies our bias towards

negative thinking? And is there a biology of joy? At Iowa University,

neuroscientists studied what happens when people are shown pleasant and

unpleasant pictures. When subjects see landscapes or dolphins playing, part of

the frontal lobe of the brain becomes active. But when they are shown unpleasant

images a bird covered in oil, or a dead soldier with part of his face missing

the response comes from more primitive parts of the brain. The ability to feel

negative emotions derives from an ancient danger-recognition system formed early

in the brain's evolution. The pre-frontal cortex, which registers happiness, is

the part used for higher thinking, an area that evolved later in human

history.

G Our difficulty, according to Daniel Nettle, is that the brain systems for

liking and wanting are separate. Wanting involves two ancient regions the

amygdala and the nucleus accumbens that communicate using the chemical dopamine

to form the brain's reward system. They are involved in anticipating the

pleasure of eating and in addiction to drugs. A rat will press a bar repeatedly,

ignoring sexually available partners, to receive electrical stimulation of the

"wanting" parts of the brain. But having received brain stimulation, the rat

eats more but shows no sign of enjoying the food it craved. In humans, a drug

like nicotine produces much craving but little pleasure.

H In essence, what the biology lesson tells us is that negative emotions are

fundamental to the human condition, and ifs no wonder they are difficult to

eradicate. At the same time, by a trick of nature, our brains are designed to

crave but never really achieve lasting happiness.

2.雅思阅读题目

Question 14-20

The reading passage has seven paragraphs A-H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-H, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

14 An experiment involving dividing several groups one of which received

positive icon

15 Review of a poorly researched psychology area

16 Contrast being made about the brain’s action as response to positive or

negative stimulus

17 The skeptical attitude toward the research seemed to be a waste of

fund

18 a substance that produces much wanting instead of much liking

19 a conclusion that lasting happiness are hardly obtained because of the

nature of brains

20 One description that listed the human emotional categories

Question 21-25

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using no

more than four words from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 21-25 on your answer sheet.

A few pioneers in experimental psychology study what happens when lives go

well. Professor Alice divided doctors, making a tricky experiment, into three

groups: beside the one control group, the other two either are asked to read

humanistic statements about drugs, or received …21... The latter displayed the

most creative thinking and worked more efficiently. Since critics are

questioning the significance of the …22…for both levels of happiness and

classification for the virtues. Professor Seligman countered in an evolutional

theory: survival in a time of adversity forged our brains into the way of

thinking for what's wrong because we have a…23…

There is bountiful of evidence to show that negative thinking is deeply built

in the human psyche. Later, at Iowa University, neuroscientists studied the

active parts in brains to contrast when people are shown pleasant and unpleasant

pictures. When positive images like…24…are shown, part of the frontal lobe of

the brain becomes active. But when they are shown unpleasant image, the response

comes from …25…of the brain.

Question 26

Write your answers in boxes 26 on your answer sheet.

Choose the correct letter. A, B, C or D.

According to Daniel Nettle in the last two paragraphs, what is true as the

scientists can tell us about happiness

A Brain systems always mix liking and wanting together.

B Negative emotions can be easily rid of if we think positively.

C Happiness is like nicotine we are craving for but get little pleasure.

D The inner mechanism of human brains does not assist us to achieve durable

happiness.

雅思精读分析

文章题目：科学家可以告诉我们什么是幸福吗

篇章结构 体裁 议论文

题目科学家可以告诉我们什么是幸福吗

结构

A段: 关于幸福的早期心理学研究主流是负面情绪

B段: 少数心理学家研究正面情感带给人的益处

C段: 批评家质疑用积极思考来研究幸福的合理性

D段: 冰河世纪的古人类惯用消极思维模式

E段: 消极想法更容易被牢记

F段: 积极和消极想法的大脑结构的生物学基础

G段: 区分喜欢和欲望是研究幸福的难点

H段: 消极情绪是人类生存的基础

试题分析