广外英语专业历年写作与翻译 summary.docVIP

1998 Summary (30%) Give a summary of the passage below in about 250 words. Try to use your own words. Do not copy whole sentences in the passage. Is there a gene for genius? Dr. Howard Gardner of Harvard University believes that geniuses are largely made. He has banned television from his home because he fears it might ??? the minds of his family. He makes time every day to listen to his seven-year-old son, Benjamin, play the piano - even if it is no more than a few minutes during a transatlantic phone call while he is away at a conference. Dr. Sandra Scary of Virginia University, president of the Society for Research in Child Development, believes geniuses are largely born. She says parents should not worry too much about whether to take their kids to a bal1 same or to a museum. Talent will out. It seems psychologists are as divided as ever over the issue of nature versus nurture. This may, however, be about to change. A conference organised earlier this year by the Ciba Foundation brought to London some of the biggest names from both sides of the debate. Startling results from unpublished work were revealed and the beginning of a consensus could be discerned. The most exciting results came from those working on the biology of individual differences. Dr Robert Flomin of Penn State University, working with a team from Cardiff University, hopes to announce within the next few months that he has tracked down one of the genes that plays a part in determining intelligence. An unnamed gene has been identified but the results have yet to be confirmed. At present. It is believed that genes account for at least half of what researchers call g - the general cognitive ability that IQ tests are supposed to measure – while environmental influences account for the other half. But so far the evidence for a genetic component has been purely statistical, being inferred from comparisons of twins and other such hereditary studies. Plomins method makes use of new gene mapping tec