A.A
B.B
C.C
D.D

某些社会冲突有助于社会稳定

社会冲突可能会导致核心价值观念的分歧

开放社会的特征是允许不同群体间的冲突存在

社会的和谐与冲突是辩证的

selective

secretive

perfunctory

racially biased

正确

错误

正确

错误

find out about the reported cases of smallpox

vaccinate people in remote areas

teach people how to treat smallpox

prevent infected people from moving around

We used to think that the left brain controlled your thinking and that the right brain controlled your heart. But neuroscientists have learned that it’s a lot more complicated.

In 2007, an influential paper in the journal Behavioral and Brain Functions found that while most of us process emotions through the right hemisphere of the brain, about 35 % of people—especially victims of trauma—process their hurt and anger through their left brain, where logic and language sit. That may be because they had worked so hard to explain, logically, why they were suffering. But pushing emotions through the left brain taxed it: these people performed significantly worse on memory tests.

Now a new paper—out in the September issue of The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease—further complicates the picture with a surprising finding: whether you are right-handed, left-handed or ambidextrous (which the authors call, rather delightfully, " inconsistently handed") seems to be an important clue in understanding how you use your brain to process emotions.

It’s been known for some time that lefties and the ambidextrous are more prone to negative emotions. The new study shows that they also have a greater imbalance in activity between the left and right brains when they process emotions. Of course, you can’t be sure which comes first: maybe angry people are more out of balance, or maybe the inability to find equilibrium makes you angry. As for the left-handed: maybe they’re more angry because the world is designed for the right-handed majority.

The study also used an interesting method to find that angry people are, literally, hot-headed: the authors of the paper—led by Ruth Propper, a psychology professor at Merrimack College in Massachusetts- measured brain-hemisphere activation with a relatively old method called tympanic membrane temperature, which is essentially how hot it is in your inner ear. If you get angry a lot, your head tends to be warmer.

One problem is that the study was small —just 55 undergraduates participated (they were paid $20 each for having to endure ear-temperature tests and psychological questioning). Also, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, while peer-reviewed, is one of less-respected psychology journals. Still, I like the study just because it explains that when you get hot under the collar, you are actually hot under the collar.

It might seem odd to think of pre-kindergarten toddlers as students in need of teachers, but the latest research suggests that some form of instruction may help children to better prepare for school.

Nina Chien, a post doctoral researcher in pediatrics at the University of California San Diego found that children who were left to engage in free play in pre-kindergarten centers showed the least improvement in reading and math skills after one year compared with the children who benefited from some form of teacher instruction. The free play groups were provided with educational toys designed to stimulate their creative and cognitive processes, but they still learned up to two fewer alphabet letters and three fewer numbers than those who worked with teachers. Overall, when the children reached kindergarten, their teachers rated them up to 96% lower on language and literacy skills compared to their classmates.

Chien based her study on 701 state-funded pre-kindergarten programs in 11 states, was surprised by the findings since more than 50% of children were enrolled in free-play based centers, an indication of their popularity. "It’s very popular to give kids rich educational materials, let them chose which ones they want to play with, and let them play, "she says. "It was surprising that this very popular model turned out not to be that beneficial. "

The children who showed the most gains over the year in terms of learning the alphabet and numbers, as well as achieving basic reading and math skills, were those who had more individual interaction with teachers. Some teacher-based programs emphasized group instruction, while others involved more one-on-one guidance, in which teachers would encourage students to think more broadly or creatively. If a child drew a sun, for example, an instructor might ask how he could depict the brightness of sun, and guide the child to coming up with a way to draw the sun’s rays. Such encouragement, known as scaffolding, resulted in the most academic gains among the children.

Based on her findings, Chien believes that there is still a role for free play, as the children in these programs exhibited greater creativity over the year. She also notes that the study involved public programs in which many of the students came from lower income households. Previous studies have shown that such children benefit more from individualized ins/ruction since they may not be receiving much guidance or support at home. But overall, she says, greater teacher interaction, combined with free play, might enhance children’s learning ability and better prepare them for school. Given the dwindling resources in public education, however, that may be harder and harder to achieve.

receive

perceive

provide

refuse