Question

It’s well known that our human memory can fail us. People can be forgetful, and they can sometimes also “remember” things incorrectly, with damaging consequences in the classroom, courtroom, and other areas of life. Now, researchers show for the first time that bumblebees(大黄蜂) can be unreliable witnesses too.

Bumblebees are rather clever animals, which explains why Chittka has been studying learning and memory in the insects for the last 20 years.

Most times when people have studied memory in animals, errors in performance have been taken to mean that the animals failed to learn the task or perhaps learned it and then forgot. But what if animals can experience a more interesting type of memory failure?

To find out, Chittka first trained bumblebees to expect a reward when visiting a yellow artificial flower followed by one with black-and-white rings. During subsequent tests, bees were given a choice between three types of flowers. Two were the types they’d seen in the training before. The third had yellow-and-white rings, representing a mixed-up version of the other two. Minutes after the training, the bees showed a clear preference for the flower that recently rewarded them.

One or three days later, however, something very different happened when the bumblebees’ memory was put to the test. At first, the bees showed the same preference displayed in the earlier tests, but as the time went on, they began selecting the flower with yellow rings, even though they’d never actually seen that one in training before.

Chittka says that insects make similar errors in the conjunction (结合) of long-term memories as humans do. The ability to extract (提取) common features between different events in the environment might come at the expense of remembering every detail correctly. In bees, with their limited brain capacity (容量), the pressure to store main features of several objects rather than each individual object might be much greater, compared with humans.

1.Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A. Human memory can fail sometimes.

B. Bumblebees make false memories too.

C. Humans are not as clever as bumblebees.

D. Bumblebees have extraordinary memory.

2.Which of the following is the closest in meaning to the underlined word subsequent?

A. scientific                B. accurate

C. following                 D. exceptional

3.What does the test mentioned in Paragraph 4 tell us?

A. Short-term memories serve the bees well.

B. The yellow artificial flower appeals to the bees.

C. Bumblebees like the flowers with yellow-and-white rings.

D. Bees have remarkable abilities to distinguish colors.

4. We can infer from the passage that ______.

A. Chittka thinks that bumblebees failed to remember the color of the flowers

B. Researchers have learned that bumblebees are unreliable animals

C. There exist no similarities between the memory errors in humans and bees.

D. It is less challenging for humans than bees to store main features of several objects.

Answer

1.B

2.C

3.A

4.D

【解析】

试题分析：本文是一篇说明文，人们的记忆有时候会欺骗人们，现在有一项新的研究大黄蜂的记忆也能可能是不靠谱的。

1.标题归纳题。 Now, researchers show for the first time that bumblebees(大黄蜂) can be unreliable witnesses too.可知大黄蜂的记忆也是可以骗人的，所以题目应该是围绕这个造就，所以选B。

2.

3.

4.推理判断题。 In bees, with their limited brain capacity (容量), the pressure to store main features of several objects rather than each individual object might be much greater, compared with humans.可知蜜蜂的记忆受限制，所以选D。

考点：考查说明文类短文阅读