【正文】 he paper, but hoping to give the boy a chance to open up about the problem. The teacher rarely told her students what they ought to do, but she felt Gordon should know that such extreme sensitivity would make it difficult for him in the entertainment field, where stage personnel, and fellow performers often are very hard on new talent. She asked Gordon if he felt he had made necessary preparations to follow through in such a petitive and difficult business. Gordon got angry with the teacher, pointing a brave finger at her, and told her she was “dead wrong” about him. Further, Gordon asked what she could possibly know about music and the pressures of the profession. The teacher stood up and turned Gordon around, right in the middle of a sentence, asking him to continue, but to watch himself in the mirror on the back of the office door as he talked. Gordon tried to go on, pointing and gesticulating, but suddenly he saw his expression in the mirror, then when he turned to face the psychologist, he noticed a smile beginning to form on the teacher’s face. At the very top of his “outburst,” Gordon burst out laughing. He stopped his aggressive talk and asked the teacher if he looked that ridiculous all the time. Seeing himself “objectively” made Gordon realize that how ridiculous it was to take himself so seriously. In our everyday life, the ability to catch ourselves being so serious, bearing all the burdens of the world, and trying to save the human race helps us relieve some builtup tension through laughter. Laughter is a necessary part of mental health. Laughter is one of the ways in which we relax and recreate the selfhood. The things we find in humor may vary, but the experiences of humor, pleasure, and enjoyment are extremely important and must be fostered. 63. From the first two paragraphs, we can learn that Gordon ________. A. has broken up with his coach B. has failed to be a professional singer C. keeps practicing and hopes for the best D. feels very sensitive to other people’s ments 64. Why did the psychologist talk with Gordon? A. To discuss his paper with him. B. To help him realize his problem. C. To point out his rude behaviors. D. To offer advice on reducing pressure. 65. How does the author support his ideas? A. By offering analyses. B. By providing research results. C. By giving an example. D. By stating an argument. 66. What is mainly discussed in the passage? A. Means of laughter. B. Benefits of humor. C. The cause of sensitivity. D. The importance of health. D Can Training Your Working Memory Make You Smarter? We would all like to increase our cognitive(認(rèn)知的 ) ability beyond the limits set by Mother Nature. So it’s no wonder that braintraining programmes – which typically focus on training our working memory – are a multibilliondollar industry. But can this kind of training really make us smarter? Cognitive training sees the brain as a kind of muscle that can be made stronger with the right kind of practice. It consists of tasks or games carried out on puters or smart phones. Despite much research, there has so far been no agreement about its effectiveness. Some think that cognitive training increases a broad range of cognitive abilities, while others less optimistic. Yet we do know that some cognitive skills, such as working memory and intelligence, tend to go together and are predictors of reallife skills such as work performance. Thus, training one cognitive skill might lead to an improvement in many other cognitive and noncognitive skills. That is exactly the underlying hypothesis(假設(shè) ) on which workingmemory training is based. To test this hypothesis, we examined all the studies about workingmemory training we could find with normally developing children: 26 experiments and 1,601 total participants. Children represent an ideal test group: during childhood, skills are still at the beginning of their development. Thus, cognitive training is more likely to succeed with children than adults. The results were very clear. Workingmemory training did not show any effect on children’s fluid intelligence, a person’s ability to solve new problems and adapt to new situations. It didn’t influence their academic achievement or other cognitive abilities, either. The only reliable effect was that children got better at what they trained to do. No more, no less. So performing workingmemory tasks does seem to make you better at doing them. Noheless, the fact that participants got better at such tasks does not necessarily mean that their workingmemory ability increased. They may just have learnt how to perform that particular type of task. The results do indicate that the use of workingmemory training programs as an educational tool is fruitless. More generally, together with other research, the results contribute to disproving cognitive training panies’ promises of a better brain. The results have even more important implications theoretically. They question the hypothesis that training general cognitive mechanisms can affect other cognitive or reallife skills. Beyond workingmemory training, other recent studies have shown the limitations of different types of cognitive training. For example, music training fails at improving cognitive skills outside music – including academic skills. However, these negative results must not discourage us from training our cognitive and noncognitive skills. We just have to be aware of the actual limitations of such practice in areas outside what we are actually training. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it – the most efficient way to develop a skill is, after all, to train that skill. 67. According to the passage, cognitive training is likely to _______. A. uncover the secrets of human minds B. make one