[社会学]快速阅读2011.docVIP

Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions. For questions 1 ~ 7, choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). For questions 8 ~ 10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage. ONE Right and Left-handedness in Humans Why do human, quite different from the other animal species, display a distinct left or right-handedness? Not even our closest relatives among the apes (猿) possess such decided lateral (横向的) asymmetry (不对称), as psychologists call it. Yet about 90 per cent of every human population that has ever lived appears to have been right-handed. Professor Bryan Turner at Deakin University has studied the research literature on left-handedness and found that handedness goes with sidedness. So nine out of ten people are right-handed and eight are right-footed. He noted that this distinctive asymmetry in the human population is itself systematic. “Humans are able to think about things in categories; black and white, up and down, left and right. It’s a system of signs that enables us to categorize phenomena that are essentially ambiguous.” The Genetic or Inherited Element Research has shown that there is genetic or inherited (继承的) element to handedness. But while left-handedness tends to appear in families, neither left nor right handers will automatically produce children with the same handedness; in fact about 6 per cent of children with two right-handed parents will be left-handed. However, among two left-handed parents, perhaps 40 per cent of the children will also be left-handed. With one right and one left-handed parent, 15 to 20 per cent of the children will be left-handed. Even among identical twins who have exactly the same genes, one in six pairs will differ in their handedness. Researchers Turning to the Brain What then makes people left-handed if it is not simply because of genetic cause? O