阅读下列短文,从每题所给的 A、B、C、D 四个选项中选出最佳选项。
People have wondered for a long time how
their personalities and behaviors are formed. It's not easy to explain why one
person is intelligent and another is not, or why one is cooperative and another
is competitive.
Social scientists are, of course, extremely
interested in these types of questions.
They want to explain why we possess certain
characteristics and exhibit certain behaviors. There are no clear answers yet,
but two distinct schools of thought on the matter have developed. As one might
expect the two approaches are very different from one another, and there is a
great deal of debate between proponents of each theory. The controversy is
often conveniently referred to as “nature/nurture”.
Those who support the “nature” side of the
conflict believe that our personalities and behavior patterns are largely
determined by biological and genetic factors. That our environment has little,
if anything, to do with our abilities, characteristics, and behavior is central
to this theory. Taken to an extreme, this theory maintains that our behavior is
predetermined to such a great degree that we are almost completely governed by
our instincts.
Proponents of the “nurture” theory, or, as they are
often called behaviorists, claim that our environment is more important than
our biologically based instincts in determining how we will act. Behaviorists
see humans as being whose behavior is almost completely shaped by their
surroundings. Their view of the human being is quite mechanistic; they maintain
that like machines, humans respond to environmental stimuli as the basis of
their behavior.
The social and political implications of
these two theories are profound. In the
United States, for example, blacks often
score below whites on standardized intelligence test. This leads some “nature”
proponents to conclude that blacks are genetically inferior to whites.
Behaviorists, in contrast, say that the differences in scores are due to the
fact that blacks are often deprived of many of the educational and other
environmental advantages that white enjoy, and that, as a result, they do not
develop the same responses that whites do.
Neither of these theories can yet fully
explain human behavior. In fact, it is quite likely that the key to our
behavior lies somewhere between these two extremes.
That the controversy will continue for a long
time is certain.
(1)
The author is mainly concerned about solving the problem__________________.
A . why one's behaviors differ from others'
B . what makes different stages of intelligence
C . how social scientists form different theories
D . what causes the “nature/nurture” controversy
(2)
The word “proponents” can best be replaced by ________________.
A . approaches
B . advocates
C . principles
D . characters
(3)
What can we learn about the behaviorists?
A . They believe human beings are mechanical.
B . They compare our behaviors to the machines.
C . They suggest that we react to the environment as the machines do.
D . They uphold that the mechanistic theory can be applied on us as well.
(4)
The “nature” theorists believe that the blacks' low scores____________.
A . are the result of the educational disadvantages
B . have nothing to do with their true intelligence
C . are an indication of the blacks' poor intelligence
D . have nothing to do with factors other than instincts
答案: A
B
C
D