Several recent studies have focused on how people think about ethics in a non-native language—as might take place, for example,

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问题     Several recent studies have focused on how people think about ethics in a non-native language—as might take place, for example, among a group of delegates at the United Nations using a lingua franca to hash out a resolution. The findings suggest that when people are confronted with moral dilemmas, they do indeed respond differently when considering them in a foreign language than when using their native tongue.
    Why does it matter whether we judge morality in our native language or a foreign one? According to one explanation, such judgments involve two separate and competing modes of thinking—one of these, a quick, gut-level "feeling," and the other, careful deliberation about the greatest good for the greatest number.【B6】____________This may seem paradoxical, but is in line with findings that reading math problems in a hard-to-read font makes people less likely to make careless mistakes.
    【B7】___________________
    As a result, moral judgments made in a foreign language are less laden with the emotional reactions that surface when we use a language learned in childhood.
    There’s strong evidence that memory intertwines a language with the experiences and interactions through which that language was learned. For example, people who are bilingual are more likely to recall an experience if prompted in the language in which that event occurred. Our childhood languages, learned in the throes of passionate emotion—whose childhood, after all, is not streaked through with an abundance of love, rage, wonder, and punishment?—become infused with deep feeling.【B8】______________
    If language can serve as a container for potent memories of our earliest transgressions and punishments, then it is not surprising that such emotional associations might color moral judgments made in our native language.
    The balance is tipped even further toward this explanation by a recent study published in the journal Cognition. This new research involved scenarios in which good intentions led to bad outcomes (someone gives a homeless person a new jacket, only to have the poor man beat up by others who believe he has stolen it) or good outcomes occurred despite dubious motives (a couple adopts a disabled child to receive money from the state).【B9】_________
    These results clash with the notion that using a foreign language makes people think more deeply, because other research has shown that careful reflection makes people think more about the intentions that underlie people’s actions rather than less.
    But the results do mesh with the idea that when using a foreign language, muted emotional responses—less sympathy for those with noble intentions, less outrage for those with nefarious motives— diminished the impact of intentions.【B10】______________
    [A]   By comparison, languages acquired late in life, especially if they are learned through restrained interactions in the classroom or blandly delivered over computer screens and headphones, enter our minds bleached of the emotionality that is present for their native speakers.
    [B]   Along with these differences, our moral compass also points in somewhat different directions depending on the language we are using at the time.
    [C]   When we use a foreign language, we unconsciously sink into the more deliberate mode simply because the effort of operating in our non-native language cues our cognitive system to prepare for strenuous activity.
    [D]   This  explanation  is  bolstered  by  findings   that  patients   with  brain  damage   to  the   ventromedial prefrontal  cortex,  an area that is involved  in  emotional  responding,  showed  a similar pattern of responses, with outcomes privileged over intentions.
    [E]   Reading these in a foreign language rather than a native language led participants to place greater weight on outcomes and less weight on intentions in making moral judgments.
    [F]   The research illuminates what is true for all of us, regardless of how many languages we speak: that our moral compass is a combination of the earliest forces that have shaped us and the ways in which we escape them.
    [G]   An alternative explanation is that differences arise between native and foreign tongues because our childhood languages vibrate with greater emotional intensity than do those learned in more academic settings.
【B10】

选项

答案D

解析 空格前指出上一段提及的研究结果与这种观点相吻合:外语弱化了原语所折射的情感反应,因此也极大地削弱了动机对道德判断的影响。D提及的研究发现也同样说明当情感反应被弱化时,以目的来作为道德判断标准的影响也会被削弱,与空格前的观点一致,因此D中的This explanation is bolstered by findings…也成立.其中的This explanation即指空格前的这个解释,故本题选D。
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