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  3. For many older people, the modern world is like a foreign country; telephones they can’t use; video machines they can’t programm

For many older people, the modern world is like a foreign country; telephones they can’t use; video machines they can’t programm

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问题     For many older people, the modern world is like a foreign country; telephones they can’t use; video machines they can’t programme; television programmes they can’t understand and music they can’t stand. Not to mention forgetting everyday things, like names and facts. No wonder that most people think that as we get older, our minds steadily lose their power and effectiveness.
    However, recent scientific experiments have shown that it is not necessarily all downhill once you are past 70. In fact, in some important ways, scientists have seen that mental powers actually improve with age. They have demonstrated that we actually get better at making social and personal judgments as we grow older. While older people are not mentally sharper than the young and their eyesight and hearing aren’t as good, they seem to have greater wisdom instead.
    These discoveries about old people have come about, says Dr. Thomas Hess of North Carolina State University, because scientists have changed the things they are looking at. "We were looking at problem areas, at abnormal brain states, because we were interested in understanding illnesses like Alzheimer’s. Now we have started to look at what happens in normal brain function and the position looks more hopeful. ".
    In one experiment carried out by Hess, groups of older and younger people were given a list of things that some imaginary people did and were asked to judge their characters for honesty and intelligence. The older group turned out to be much better at saying whiqh people were dishonest or unintelligent.
    In another experiment, old and young people were asked to create stories on various themes. These were then written down and read out to judges who didn’t know the authors’ ages. Again, older people did better.
    Even in cases where scientists had previously discovered a weakening with age, such as with memory, new studies have shown that this tendency is not as clear as was once thought. It is true that when told stories, older people are usually poor at remembering details, for example. However, when scientists gave older people stories that mirrored their own experiences—for instance, stories of retirement homes—they were just as good at remembering as young people. Hess believes that this simply shows that older people don’t bother to remember things that aren’t important to them.
    This research seems to show that with age, while we lose the ability to acquire skills, we gain in other ways. Other research has shown that older people are generally happier and have better mental health. All this seems to show that, while the young may not want to admit it, there are many things they could usefully learn from their elders.
Older people tend to forget things that are______.
选项
答案unimportant to them
解析 (文章倒数第二段最后一句话提到Hess believes that this simply shows that older people don’t bother to remember things that aren’t important to them．无关紧要的事情忘记了也无所谓。因而可知答案为unimportant to them。)
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