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剑桥雅思5test2reading2的阅读全文解析
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    What's so funny?

    John McCrone reviews recent research on humour

    You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27, which are based on Reading Passage 2

    1.The joke comes over the headphones: 'Which side of a dog has the most hair? The left ‘No, not fu
nny. Try again’. Which side of a dog has the most hair? The outside.' Hah! The punchline is silly yet fitting, tempting a smile, even a laugh. Laughter has always struck people as deeply mysterious, perhaps pointless. The writer Arthur Koestler dubbed it the luxury reflex: 'unique in that it serves no apparent biological purpose'.

    2.Theories about humour have an ancient pedigree. Plato expressed the idea that humour is simply a delighted feeling of superiority over others. Kant and Freud felt that joke-telling relies on building up a psychic tension which is safely punctured by the ludicrousness of the punchline. But most modern humour theorists have settled on some version of Aristotle's belief that jokes are based on a reaction to or resolution of incongruity, when the punchline is either nonsense or, though appearing silly, has a clever second meaning.

    3.Graeme Ritchie, a computational linguist in Edinburgh, studies the linguistic structure of jokes in order to understand not only humour but language understanding and reasoning in machines. He says that while there is no single format for jokes, many revolve around a sudden and surprising conceptual shift. A comedian will present a situation followed by an unexpected interpretation that is also apt.


    4.So even if a punchline sounds silly, the listener can see there is a clever semantic fit and that sudden mental 'Aha!' is the buzz that makes us laugh. Viewed from this angle, humour is just a form of creative insight, a sudden leap to a new perspective.

    5.However, there is another type of laughter, the laughter of social appeasement and it is important to understand this too. Play is a crucial part of development in most young mammals. Rats produce ultrasonic squeaks to prevent their scuffles turning nasty. Chimpanzees have a 'play-face' - a gaping expression accompanied by a panting 'ah, ah' noise. In humans, these signals have mutated into smiles and laughs. Researchers believe social situations, rather than cognitive events such as jokes, trigger these instinctual markers of play or appeasement. People laugh on fairground rides or when tickled to flag a play situation, whether they feel amused or not.

    6.Both social and cognitive types of laughter tap into the same expressive machinery in our brains, the emotion and motor circuits that produce smiles and excited vocalizations. However, if cognitive laughter is the product of more general thought processes, it should result from more expansive brain activity.
shudder

    7.Psychologist Vinod Goel investigated humour using the new technique of 'single event' functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). An MR! scanner uses magnetic fields and radio waves to track the changes in oxygenated blood that accompany mental activity. Until recently, MRI scanners needed several minutes of activity and so could not be used to track rapid thought processes such as comprehending a joke. New developments now allow half-second 'snapshots' of all sorts of reasoning and problem-solving activities.

    8.Although Goel felt being inside a brain scanner was hardly the ideal place for appreciating a joke, he found evidence that understanding a joke involves a widespread mental shift. His scans showed that at the beginning of a joke the listener's prefrontal cortex lit up, particularly the right prefrontal believed to be critical for problem solving. But there was also activity in the temporal lobes at the side of the head (consistent with attempts to rouse stored knowledge) and in many other brain areas. Then when the punchline arrived, a new area sprang to life - the orbital prefrontal cortex. This patch of brain tucked behind the orbits of the eyes is associated with evaluating information.

    9.Making a rapid emotional assessment of the events of the moment is an extremely demanding j
ob for the brain, animal or human. Energy and arousal levels may need to be retuned in the blink of an eye. These abrupt changes will produce either positive or negative feelings. The orbital cortex, the region that becomes active in Goel's experiment, seems the best candidate for the site that feeds such feelings into higher-level thought processes, with its close connections to the brain's sub-cortical arousal apparatus and centres of metabolic control.

    10.All warm-blooded animals make constant tiny adjustments in arousal in response to external events, but humans, who have developed a much more complicated internal life as a result of language, respond emotionally not only to their surroundings, but to their own thoughts. Whenever a sought-for answer snaps into place, there is a shudder of pleased recognition. Creative discovery being pleasurable, humans have learned to find ways of milking this natural response. The fact that jokes tap into our general evaluative machinery explains why the line between funny and disgusting, or funny and frightening, can be so fine. Whether a joke gives pleasure or pain depends on a person's outlook.

    11.Humour may be a luxury, but the mechanism behind it is no evolutionary accident. As Peter Derks, a psychologist at William and Mary College in Virginia, says: 'I like to think of humour as the di
storted mirror of the mind. It's creative, perceptual, analytical and lingual. If we can figure out how the mind processes humour, then we'll have a pretty good handle on how it works in general.'

    Questions 14-20

    Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

    In boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet, write

    TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

    FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

    NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

    14 Arthur Koestler considered laughter biologically important in several ways. F

    15 Plato believed humour to be a sign of above-average intelligence. NG

    16 Kant believed that a successful joke involves the controlled release of nervous energy. T

    17 Current thinking on humour has largely ignored Aristotle's view on the subject. F

    18 Graeme Ritchie's work links jokes to artificial intelligence. T

    19 Most comedians use personal situations as a source of humour. NG

    20 Chimpanzees make particular noises when they arc playing. T

    Questions 21-23

    The diagram below shows the areas of the brain activated by jokes. Label the diagram.

    Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.


    Write your answers in boxes 21 -23 on your answer sheet.

    21.Problem poral lobes 23.evaluating information

    Questions 24—27

    Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-G below.

    Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 24-27 on your answer sheet.

    24 One of the brain's most difficult tasks is to C

    25 Because of the language they have developed, humans A

    26 Individual responses to humour F

    27 Peter Derks believes that humour D

    Areact to their own thoughts.

    Bhelped create language in humans.

    Crespond instantly to whatever is happening.

    Dmay provide valuable information about the operation of the brain.

    Ecope with difficult situations.

    Frelate to a person's subjective views.

    Gled our ancestors to smile and then laugh.

    这篇文章虽然看起来比较贴近生活，但是理解起来还是有一定难度的，而且生词也是比较多的，所
以如果基础差的考生理解这篇文章是有一定障碍的，下面我们来看看本文需要掌握的生词和高频词汇：

    1.疑难词注解：

    punchline(结尾警语、妙语连珠) pedigree(血统，家谱)

    punctured(被刺破的) ludicrousness(可笑的，滑稽的)

    appeasement(缓和，平息) ultrasonic(超声波)

    gaping(多洞穴的;目瞪口呆的) scuffles(混战，扭打)

    motor circuits(动力电图) magnetic fields(磁场)

    abrupt changes(突变，陡变) apparatus(装置，设备)

    distorted(歪曲的，受到曲解的) evolutionary accident(进化故事)

    prefrontal cortex(前额皮质) temporal lobes(颞叶)orbital cortex(额眶部皮质)

    functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)(机能性磁共振成像)

    MRI scanners(核磁共振扫描仪) computational linguist(计算机语言学家)

    2.高频词

    headphones(耳机、听筒) dub(授予……称号)

    psychic tension(谨慎紧张) incongruity(不协调，不一致，不适宜)

    format(格式，版本) conceptual(概念上的)

    instinctual(本能的) evaluative(可估价的)


    metabolic(代谢) semantic(语义的，语义学的)

    apt(恰当的，有倾向的，灵敏的) leap to(迅速作出，立即作出)

    tap into 挖掘，开发 warm-blooded 恒温的，热温的 arousal n.唤醒，激励

    可以看出这些词汇还是有很多专业名词，对这些词汇如果不了解很可能阻碍大家答对题目。而长难句也是一大难关，一起来看看吧!

    3.长难句分析

    1.这个句子其实结构比较简单，但是因为一些生词理解起来有一定困难，而且加之是基本句型之一的there be 句型，所以小编觉得大家有必要认识一下。

    But there was also activity in the temporal lobes(颞叶) at the side of the head (consistent with attempts to rouse stored knowledge) and in many other brain areas.


    难句分析：there be 句型，其实倒装句—activity was in……; consistent with attempts to rouse stored knowledge补语解释activity。

    难句翻译：但是在头部的侧面的颞叶处也会有活动，试图在激发已储存的知识，在大脑的其他区域也会有活动。

    2.这个句子是比较复杂，也是大家经常会遇到的句型：

    All warm-blooded animals make constant tiny adjustments in arousal in response to external events, but humans, who have developed a much more complicated internal life as a result of language, respond emotionally not only to their surroundings, but to their own thoughts.

    难句分析：but humans…中but转折连词连接后面的who引导的非限定性定语从句;第一个句子主干：animals make adjustments—All warm-blooded形容词作定语修饰主语“所有恒温的动物都在不断地做着微小的调整”，in arousal in response to external events在唤醒对外部事件的反应，介词短语作后置定语修饰宾语。But 后谓语是respond to，their surroundings和 their own thoughts即为宾语。


    难句翻译：所有的恒温动物对外部事件的刺激做出反应的时候都在不断地做着细微的调整，但是人类因为拥有语言而有着更为复杂的内心活动世界 ，所以人类不仅会对他们周围的环境产生感情上地反应，而且会对他们周围的思维也产生感情上的反应。

    最后，下面为大家带来本文简单的文章框架分析，如果能够清楚的明白以下段落大意，那么相信对大家解题定位还是有很大帮助的。

    文章结构分析：

    1-2:幽默笑话的特点以及各种理论

    3-6:幽默使人发笑的原因以及各种情况下的笑的分析

    7-9:Goel对幽默进行的调查研究以及研究成果，眼眶脑皮质区域的重要作用

    10-11:人类对情感的特殊反应以及Peter对幽默背后的一些认知解释




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