Professor Reason recently persuaded 35 people to keep a diary of all their absent-minded actions for two weeks. When he came to analyze their embarrassing errors, he was surprised to find that nearly all of them fell into a few groups.
One of the women, for instance, on leaving her house for work one morning threw her pet dog her earrings and tried to fix a dog biscuit on her ear. “The explanation for this is that the brain is like a puter,” explains the professor. “People programme themselves to do certain activities regularly.” It was the woman’s custom every morning to throw her dog two biscuits and then put on her earrings. “But somehow the action got reversed（颠倒）in the programme.” About one in twenty of the incidents the volunteers reported were these “programme assembly failures.”
Twenty percent of all errors were “test failures” — mainly due to not verifying the progress of what the body was doing. A man about to get his car out of the garage passed through the back yard where his garden jacket and boots were kept, put them on — much to his surprise. A woman reported, “I got into the bath with my socks on.”
The monest problem was information “storage failures”. People forgot the names of people whose faces they knew, went into a room and forgot why they were there, mislaid something, or smoked a cigarette without realizing it.
The research so far suggests that while the central processor of the brain is liberated from second-to-second control of a well-practiced routine, it must repeatedly switch back its attention at important decision points to check that the action goes on as intended. Otherwise the activity may be gotten by another frequently and recently used programme, resulting in embarrassing errors.
【小题1】The purpose of the professor’s research is to .A．show the difference between men and womenB．sort and explain some errors in human actionsC．find the causes which lead to puter failuresD．pare puter functions with brain working【小题2】Which of the following might be grouped under “programme assembly failures”?A．A woman went to a shop and forgot what to buy.B．A man returning home after work left his key in the lock.C．A lady fell as she was paying attention to each step her feet were taking.D．An old man, with his shoes on, was trying to put on his socks.【小题3】The underlined word “verifying” (in paragraph 3) can be replaced by “ ”.A．improvingB．changingC．checkingD．stopping【小题4】According to the passage, the information “storage failure” refers to “ ”.A．information collecting system being destroyedB．one’s total memory being removedC．the loss of part of one’s memory for a timeD．the separation of one’s action from wordsB
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(答案→)B
解析：
【小题1】B 选项A意为“说明男女之间的差异”；选项B意为“分类和解释人的行为的错误”；选项C意为“发现电脑故障的原因”；选项D意为“将大脑的工作与电脑的功能作比较”。根据第一段最后一句，特别是“fell into a few groups”意为：分成几组。可知选项B为最佳答案。
【小题2】D 短文叙述了因心不在焉而犯的错误，将其分为三类：programme assembly failures，test failures和storage failures.根据这三类错误的内容可知，选项A和选项B属于storage failures.选项C属于test failures，则选项D属于programme assembly failures，故D正确。
【小题3】C 根据短文第三段的内容，以及短文最后一段简述了大脑在不断控制行为的过程中要不时地检测所作所为与所欲结果是否一致，如若不然，人们就会不自觉地做一些日常经常做的动作，这便是种种错误的根源。选项A意为“提高，改善”；选项B意为“改变”；选项C意为“检查”；选项D意为“停止；阻拦”。故选项C正确。
【小题4】C 选项A意为“信息采集系统受到破坏”；选项B意为“人的记忆被删除”；选项C意为“人一度失去记忆”；选项D意为“人的言行不一致”。根据第四段所提到的例子，可知选项C为最佳答案。