【正文】 my resume . Advisor Absolutely! Let39。re taking a jo urnalism class and you ’ ve done some reporting before in high school, right? Student Wow, you have a good memory. Advisor Well we haven ’ t had many students applying lately so … so anyway, you still want to do some reporting for us? Student Yeah, if you have room for me on the staff . Advisor Well we always need more reporters, but you know, we don39。re interested in working for the paper. Student Yeah, as a reporter . Advisor That39。m Peter Murphy. You probably don39。TPO TPO TPO TPO 15151515 – – – – Listening Listening Listening Listening Part Part Part Part Conversation Conversation Conversation Conversation 1 1 1 1 Narrator: Listen to a conversation between a student and the faculty advisor of the campus newspaper . Student Hi! I talked to someone on the phone a couple of weeks ago, Anna , I think it was? Advisor I39。m Anna, the faculty advisor Student Oh, great! I39。t r e member me, but … Advisor No! No! I remember you . You39。s right. You39。t pay anything, right? Student Yeah, I know, but I huh.. . I39。s see . I think I told you that we ask prospective reporters to turn in some outlines for possible articles . Student Yeah, I sent them in about a week ago, but I haven39。d stop by and see, but I guess you haven39。t made any decision about me yet? Advisor Well I just got here a few minutes ago... haven39。re trying to e up with ways to get more students to take their introductory courses. Advisor Right, well , apparently, nobody else is covering that story , so he wants you to follow up on it. Student OK. Uh … wha t the other outline I sent in, about the proposed increase in tuition fees? Advisor Oh, it lo oks like we39。d better get to work. Do you have any advice on how I should cover the story? Advisor Well, Max will want to talk to you but I am sure he will tell you to find out things like why the physics department39。ll want to do some interviews, you know, what do the professors think of the plans , what do the students think you get the idea but … Student But w ai t till I talk to Max before proceeding . Advisor Right, he39。clock . Lecture Lecture Lecture Lecture 1 1 1 1 Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a psychology class Professor For decades, psychologists have been looking at our ability to perform tasks while other things are going on, how we are able to keep from being distracted and what the conditi ons for good concentration are. As long ago as 1982, researchers came up with something call ed the CFQ the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire. This questionnaire asks people to rate themselves according to how often they get distracted in different situations, like h um … .. fetti ng to save a puter file because they had something else on their mind or missing a speed limit sign on the road. John? John I39。s part of the problem with th e CFQ. It doesn ’ t take other factors into account enough, like fetfulness. Plus you really can ’ t say you are getting objective scientific results from a subjective questionnaire where people report on themselves. S o it ’ s no surprise that someone attempted to design an objective way to measure distraction. I t ’ s a simple puter game designed by a psychologist named, Nilli Lavie. In Lavie ’ s game, people watch as the letters N and X appear and disappear in a certain area on the puter screen. Every time they see an N, they press one key, and every time they see an X they press another, except other letters also start appearing in the surrounding area of the screen with increasing frequency which creates a distraction and makes the task more difficult. Lavie observed that people ’ s reaction time slowed as these distractions increased. Student 2 Well that ’ s not too surprising, isn ’ t it? Professor No, it39。s the next part of the experiment that was surprising. When the difficulty really increased, when the screen filled up with letters, people got better al spotting the Xs and Ns . What do you think that happened? John Well, maybe when we are really concentrating, we just don39。t take it in, you know? Professor Yes, and that39。t admit the unimportant information. The second h ypothesis is that, yes, we do perceive everything, but the brain categorizes the information, and whatever is not relevant to what we are concentrating on gets treated as low priority. So Lavie did another experiment, designed to look at the ability to concentrate better in the face of increased difficulty. This time she used brain scanning equipment to monitor activity in a certain part of the brain, the area called V5, which is part of the visual cortex, the part of our brains that processes visual stimuli . V5 is the area of the visual cortex that39。t that mean that the first hypothesis y ou mentioned w as wr o ng, the one that says we don39。s right, up to a point, bu t that ’ s not all. Lavie also discovered that as she made the task more difficult , V5 became less a ctive, so that means that now people weren ’ t really noticing the star field at all. That was quite a surprise and it approved that the second hypothesis – that we do perceive eve rything all the time but the brain categorizes distractions differently, well, that wasn39。 s surface to approximate the dates of past geologic time periods. Ah sediment as you know i s material like sand , gra