When I was a kid, I used to spend hours listening to Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew Pinsky on their Sunday night radio show Loveline. I listened so often that I began to use one of their well-known phrases—“good times”—in my daily conversations. Scientists have a name for this phenomenon: behavioral mimicry.
You’ve probably experienced this before: after spending enough time with another person, you might start to pick up on his or her behavior or speech habits. You might even start to develop your friend’s habits without realizing it. There is a large body of literature concerning this sort of phenomenon, and it regularly happens for everything from body postures to accents to drink patterns. For example, one study found that young adults were more likely to drink their drink directly after their same-sex drinking partners, than for the two individuals to drink at their own paces.
And the effect isn’t limited to real-life face-to-face activities. Another study found that the same you-drink-then-I-drink pattern held even when watching a movie! In other words, people were more likely to take a drink of their drinks in a theater after watching the actors on the screen enjoy a drink. At least I don’t feel so strange anymore, having picked up on Adam Carolla’s “good times”.
New research published today in the journal PLOS ONE indicates that the same sort of behavioral mimicry is responsible for social eating, at least among university-age women of normal weight. That’s right: the young women were more likely to adjust their eating according to the eating pace of their same-sex dining panion.
As with most experiments, these results raise a whole new set of questions. Still, the finding that behavioral mimicry may at least partly account for eating behavior is important, and has real effects on health. The researchers note that “as long as people don’t fully recognize such important influences on intake, it will be difficult to make healthy food choices and keep a healthy diet, especially when people are exposed to the eating behavior of others”.
【小题1】The author takes his own example of using “good times” to .A．express his love for radio showsB．prove the popularity of the showC．show the influence of the hosts’ wordsD．introduce the topic of the passage【小题2】The underlined word “mimicry” in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to .A．copyingB．adjustingC．recognitionD．observation【小题3】Which of the following is NOT an example of behavioral mimicry?A．A boy eats his popcorn after watching the actor eat.B．A boy buys a Nike shirt when he finds his desk-mate has one.C．A girl unconsciously sits straight just as others do.D．A girl takes on the Yorkshire accent after a month’s stay.【小题4】It can be inferred from the last paragraph that .A．behavioral mimicry is beneficial to our healthB．behavioral mimicry decides our eating behaviorC．there are doubts on the research resultsD．there are people always exposed to bad eating habits【小题5】What is probably the author’s purpose of writing this passage?A．To draw readers’ attention to popular radio shows.B．To introduce behavioral mimicry and its influence.C．To appeal to readers not to fall into others’ habits.D．To advocate healthy food choices among readers.D
网友回答
(答案→)D
解析：本文讲述了行为模仿是什么以及它的影响。
【小题1】D作者以题图。作者通过经常收听广播后，开始使用里面的语言，然后引起话题：行为模仿。
【小题2】A 词义猜测提。通过第一段可知，作者开始模仿广播里面的语言，故此单词为copying的含义。
【小题3】B 推理判断题。根据In other words, people were more likely to take a drink of their drinks in a theater after watching the actors on the screen enjoy a drink.可知A属于行为模仿。C想通过常识判断属于行为模仿；而作者本身就是对语言的模仿，所以D项也正确。B项属于有意识的跟风，并非行为模仿。
【小题4】C推理题。根据最后一段第一二句话可知，研究结果引起了一套新的问题。故对此研究结果仍有疑虑。
【小题5】B作者意图题。作者写本文的目的就是为了介绍行为模仿这个概念以及告诉我们行为模仿的影响。