首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. The Origins of Laughter While jo
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. The Origins of Laughter While jo
admin
2015-05-04
18
问题
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
The Origins of Laughter
While joking and wit are uniquely human inventions, laughter certainly is not. Other creatures, including chimpanzees, gorillas and even rats, laugh. The fact that they laugh suggests that laughter has been around for a lot longer than we have.
There is no doubt that laughing typically involves groups of people. "Laughter evolved as a signal to others — it almost disappears when we are alone," says Robert Provine, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland. Provine found that most laughter comes as a polite reaction to everyday remarks such as "see you later", rather than anything particularly funny. And the way we laugh depends on the company we’re keeping. Men tend to laugh longer and harder when they are with other men, perhaps as a way of bonding. Women tend to laugh more and at a higher pitch when men are present, possibly indicating flirtation or even submission.
To find the origins of laughter, Provine believes we need to look at play. He points out that the masters of laughing are children, and nowhere is their talent more obvious than in the boisterous antics, and the original context is play. Well-known primate watchers, including Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, have long argued that chimps laugh while at play. The sound they produce is known as a pant laugh. It seems obvious when you watch their behavior — they even have the same ticklish spots as we do. But after removing the context, the parallel between human laughter and a chimp’s characteristic pant laugh is not so clear. When Provine played a tape of the pant laughs to 119 of his students, for example, only two guessed correctly what it was.
These findings underline how chimp and human laughter vary. When we laugh the sound is usually produced by chopping up a single exhalation into a series of shorter with one sound produced on each inward and outward breath. The question is: does this pant laughter have the same source as our own laughter? New research lends weight to the idea that it does. The findings come from Elke Zimmerman, head of the Institute for Zoology in Germany, who compared the sounds made by babies and chimpanzees in response to tickling during the first year of their life. Using sound spectrographs to reveal the pitch and intensity of vocalizations, she discovered that chimp and human baby laughter follow broadly the same pattern. Zimmerman believes the closeness of baby laughter to chimp laughter supports the idea that laughter was around long before humans arrived on the scene. What started simply as a modification of breathing associated with enjoyable and playful interactions has acquired a symbolic meaning as an indicator of pleasure.
Pinpointing when laughter developed is another matter. Humans and chimps share a common ancestor that lived perhaps 8 million years ago, but animals might have been laughing long before that. More distantly related primates, including gorillas, laugh, and anecdotal evidence suggests that other social mammals can do too. Scientists are currently testing such stories with a comparative analysis of just how common laughter is among animals. So far, though, the most compelling evidence for laughter beyond primates comes from research done by Jaak Panksepp from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, into the ultrasonic chirps produced by rats during play and in response to tickling.
All this still doesn’t answer the question of why we laugh at all. One idea is that laughter and tickling originated as a way of sealing the relationship between mother and child. Another is that the reflex response to tickling is protective, alerting us to the presence of crawling creatures that might harm us or compelling us to defend the parts of our bodies that are most vulnerable in hand-to-hand combat. But the idea that has gained the most popularity in recent years is that laughter in response to tickling is a way for two individuals to signal and test their trust in one another. This hypothesis starts from the observation that although a little tickle can be enjoyable, if it goes on too long it can be torture. By engaging in a bout of tickling, we put ourselves at the mercy of another individual, and laughing is what makes it a reliable signal of trust, according to Tom Flamson, a laughter researcher at the University of California, Los Angels. "Even in rats, laughter, tickle, play and trust are linked. Rats chirp a lot when they play," says Flamson. "These chirps can be aroused by tickling. And they get bonded to us as a result, which certainly seems like a show of trust."
We’ll never know which animal laughed the first laugh, or why. But we can be sure it wasn’t in response to a prehistoric joke. The funny thing is that while the origins of laughter are probably quite serious, we owe human laughter and our language-based humor to the same unique skill. While other animals pant, we alone can control our breath well enough to produce the sound of laughter. Without that control there would also be no speech — and no jokes to endure.
Questions 1-6
Look at the following research findings(Questions 1-6)and the list of people below.
Match each finding with the correct person, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
List of People
A Provine
B Zimmerman
C Panksepp
D Flamson
Laughter can be used to show that we feel safe and secure with others.
选项
答案
D
解析
利用细节信息“feel safe and secure with others”定位于原文第五段中间“laughterin response to tickling is a way for two individuals to signal and test their trust in oneanother”,以及后面Tom Flamson的观点“laughing is what makes it a reliable signal oftrust according to Tom Flamson”,这里“trust”对应题目里的“feel safe and secure withothers”,所以正确答案为D。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/Y2EYFFFM
本试题收录于:
雅思阅读题库雅思(IELTS)分类
0
雅思阅读
雅思(IELTS)
相关试题推荐
BeforeGibson,populardiscoursesurroundingtheInformationAgeoftendepictedthecurrenteraasoneinwhichadvanced
African-Americanfilmmakersshouldbeinanenviableposition,forsincetheearly1990stherehasbeenasteadywaveof
Aftertwominutesinthesteamchamber,sweatbegantoflowin______fromeveryhispore,drippingsteadilyfromhisfingertips.
Peopleshouldnottakegoodconstitutionforgranted,forhumangeneticcodeis______thedevelopmentof______.
Akeyfeatureofquantuminformationscienceistheunderstandingthatgroupsoftwoormorequantumobjectscanhavesta
Relativismamountstothedenialofanobjectiveworldaboutwhichtrueandfalsestatementscanbemade;thereisnoabs
Relativismamountstothedenialofanobjectiveworldaboutwhichtrueandfalsestatementscanbemade;thereisnoabs
Thenovelistdevotessomuchtimetoaviddescriptionsofhischaracters’clothesthatthereadersoonfeelsthatsuch______conc
Governmentofficialsauthorized______becausetheywanttohaveacompleteenumerationofthecountry’spopulation.
Althoughchildren’sbooksaboutanimalsandplantsareoften(i)______ratherthanaccurateintheirdescriptions,askillfulele
随机试题
A.肩井B.承泣C.瞳子髎D.委中(2007年第104,105题)既可直刺、深刺,又可针刺放血的腧穴是()
A.国药准字+J+4位年号+4位顺序号B.国药进字+4位年号+4位顺序号C.国药材进字+4位年号+4位顺序号D.国药准字+Z+4位年号+4位顺序号进口分包装药品批准文号格式为()
在下列基坑监测项目中,属于A类监测的一项是()。
建筑地面工程应严格控制各构造层的厚度,下列关于建筑地面工程厚度控制叙述不正确的是()。
对已放行的进口货物海关可以进行稽查的年限是(),超过这个年限海关将不予追究。按照《中华人民共和国海关稽查条例》规定,海关进行稽查时可以行使的职权有()。
中国人民银行对()有权进行检查监督。
ABC公司2009年度财务报表的主要资料如下:要求:与行业平均财务比率比较,说明该公司经营管理可能存在的问题。
按规定航线经过经停站至终点站或直达终点站的飞行称为()。
设X1,X2,…,X100为来自总体X的简单随机样本,其中P{X=0}=P{X=1}=1/2,φ(x)表示标准正态分布函数,则利用中心极限定理可得的近似值为().
Thespeechismainlyabouttheorganizationofthecompany.
最新回复
(
0
)