2024届高考英语外刊阅读天天练：综合训练二十七

高考英语外刊阅读天天练   综合训练二十七

 

1. 阅读理解

'Some people see the world faster':athletes may track moving objects better than others

【The Guardian(April 2, 2024)】

If you have wondered why your partner always beats you at tennis, it seems there is more to it than pure physical ability. Some people are in effect able to see more“images per second"" than others, research suggests, meaning they're innately better at spotting or tracking fast-moving objects such as tennis balls.

The rate at which our brains can discriminate between different visual signals is known as temporal resolution and influences the speed at which we are able to respond to changes in our environment. Previous studies have suggested that animals with high visual temporal resolution tend to be species with fast-paced lives, such as predators. Human research has also suggested that this trait tends to decrease as we get older and dips temporarily after intense exercise. However, it was not clear how much it varied between people of similar ages.

One way of measuring this trait is to identify the point at which someone stops perceiving a flickering light to ficker and sees it as a constant or still light instead. Clinton Haarlem, a PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin, and his colleagues tested this in 80 women and men between the ages of 18 and 35, and found wide variability in the threshold at which this happened.

The research, published in Plos One, found that some people reported a light source as constant when it was in fact flashing about 35 times a second, while others could still detect flashes at rates of greater than 60 times a second. This is still some way off the temporal resolution of peregrine falcons, which process roughly 100 visual frames a second.

“We think people who see flicker at higher rates basically have access to a little bit more visual information per time frame than people on the lower end of the spectrum," said Haarlem.

While it is not yet clear how such variation might affect our day-to-day lives, Haarlem suspects elite athletes and professional gamers may have higher than average visual temporal resolution.“Individual differences in perception speed might become apparent in high-speed situations where one might need to locate or track fast-moving objects, such as in ball sports, or in situations where visual scenes change rapidly, such as in competitive gaming," he said.

“They may have an advantage over others before they have even picked uparacquet or grabbed a controller." One outstanding question is the extent to which this traitis trainable. While people's reaction speeds can improve with practice, this is thought to relate to how long it takes them to respond to something after their brains have visually perceived it.

“This is more like the information coming in to begin with," said Haarlem.“We don't know much about where this variation is coming from and what it is connected to. It could have to do with our eyes or be related to the brain filtering out information.”

1. Which of the following statements concerning temporal resolution is correct?

1. People with high temporal resolution are innately better at tennis
2. Predators in animals tend to have low visual temporal resolution
3. Old people are definitely having lower temporal resolution than young people
4. Temporal resolution may decrease after intense experience and restore afterwards

2. Why did Clinton Haarlem test 80 women and men between the ages of similar ages?

1. He wanted to measure how temporal resolution varied between those people
2. He wanted to evaluate their performances in perceiving a still light
3. He wanted to check whether those people will stop perceive a flickering light 
4. He wanted to offer the right flickering rates about the temporal resolution.