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  3. Inundated by more information than we can possibly hold in our heads, we’re increasingly handing off the job of remembering to s

Inundated by more information than we can possibly hold in our heads, we’re increasingly handing off the job of remembering to s

admin2015-05-11  37
问题     Inundated by more information than we can possibly hold in our heads, we’re increasingly handing off the job of remembering to search engines and smart phones. Google is even reportedly working on eyeglasses that could one day recognize faces and supply details about whoever you’re looking at. But new research shows that outsourcing our memory—and expecting that information will be continually and instantaneously available—is changing our cognitive habits.
    Research conducted by Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University, has identified three new realities about how we process information in the Internet age. First, her experiments showed that when we don’t know the answer to a question, we now think about where we can find the nearest Web connection instead of the subject of the question itself. A second revelation is that when we expect to be able to find information again later on, we don’t remember it as well as when we think it might become unavailable. And then there is the researchers’ final observation: the expectation that we’ll be able to locate information down the line leads us to form a memory not of the fact itself but of where we’ll be able to find it.
    But this handoff comes with a downside. Skills like critical thinking and analysis must develop in the context of facts: we need something to think and reason about, after all. And these facts can’t be Googled as we go: they need to be stored in the original hard drive, our long-term memory. Especially in the case of children, "factual knowledge must precede skill," says Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology, at the University of Virginia—meaning that the days of drilling the multiplication table and memorizing the names of the Presidents aren’t over quite yet. Adults, too, need to recruit a supply of stored knowledge in order to situate and evaluate new information they encounter. You can’t Google context.
    Last, there’s the possibility, increasingly terrifying to contemplate, that our machines will fail us. As Sparrow puts it, "The experience of losing our Internet connection becomes more and more like losing a friend. " If you’re going to keep your memory on your smart phone, better make sure it’s fully charged.
What is the implied message of the author?
选项 A、Web connections aid our memory.
B、People differ in what to remember.
C、People keep memory on smart phones.
D、People need to exercise their memory.
答案D
解析 推断题。根据本文的篇章结构，作者的态度和结论主要体现在最后一段。该段第一句就指出“there’s the possibility，increasingly terrifying to contemplate，that our machines will fail us”，机器有可能会出现问题，而如果我们将记忆完全依赖于它们，这是非常可怕的；另外，最后一句“If you’re going to keep your memory on your smart phone，better makesure it’s fully charged．”实质上是讽刺现代人对电子设备的过度依赖。作者暗含的意思是“人们不能过于依赖电子设备，应该锻炼自己的记忆力”。因此[D]为正确答案。
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