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发表于 2016-7-11 21:27:36
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第二节 快速阅读题强化集训
Test 1
Dare to Dream
Our dreams may affect our lives more than we ever realized. For 11 years, a 58-year-old anthropologist kept a journal of nearly 5,000 dreams. By analyzing color patterns in the dreams, Arizonabased researcher Robert Hoss could accurately predict certain things about the mans emotional state.
“The clues were in the colors,” he says. The anthropologist’s dominant dream hues were reds and blacks, which spiked during difficult times. “Even without knowing the events in his life,” Hoss observes, “we accurately determined the emotional states based on those colors in his dreams.”
Hoss is among a growing group of researchers who, thanks to cutting edge medical technology and innovative psychological research, are beginning to decode the secrets hidden in our dreams and the role dreaming plays in our lives. A look at some of their latest discoveries can give us new insights into the language of dreams and help us make the most of our time asleep.
Why Do We Dream?
Dreams are a way for the subconscious to communicate with the conscious mind. Dreaming of something you’re worried about is the brain’s way of helping you rehearse for a disaster in case it occurs. Dreaming of a challenge, like giving a presentation at work or playing sports, can enhance your performance.
Dreaming is a “mood regulatory system,” says Rosalind Cartwright, chairman of the psychology department at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. She’s found that dreams help people work through the days emotional quandaries. “It’s like having a builtin therapist,” says Cartwright. While we sleep, dreams compare new emotional experience to old memories, creating plaid-like patterns of old images laid on top of new ones.
In fact, dream emotions can help real therapists treat patients undergoing traumatic life events. In a new study of 30 recently divorced adults, Cartwright tracked their dreams over a fivemonth period, measuring their feelings toward their exspouses. She discovered that those who were angriest at the spouse while dreaming had the best chance of successfully coping with divorce. “If their dreams were bland,” Cartwright says, “they hadn’t started to work through their emotions and deal with the divorce.” For therapists, this finding will help determine whether divorced men or women need counseling or have already dreamed their troubles away.
One Interpretation Doesn’t Fit All
No device lets researchers probe the content of dreams while we sleep, but scientists are finding new ways to interpret dreams once we’ve awakened. Forget Freud’s notion that dreams contain images with universal meanings (e.g., cigar=penis). A new generation of psychologists insists that dream symbols differ depending on the dreamer. In a recent study, University of Ottawa psychology professor Joseph De Koninck asked 13 volunteers to make two lists: one of details recalled from recent dreams, and another of recent events in their waking lives. When analysts were asked to match which volunteer experienced which dream, they failed. De Konincks conclusion: Each person understands his or her dreams better than anyone else—including traditional psychoanalysts. In a dream, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar—or almost anything else.
“There’s just no evidence of universal dream symbols,” says De Koninck. “My advice is to throw away your dream dictionary if you really want to interpret your dreams.”
Decoding the Meanings
Today, psychologists are applying modern technology to probe the content of dreams. Hoss uses a computer based approach called content analysis to interpret the colors in dreams. More than 80 percent of people dream in color, he says, though only a quarter of them recall the shades the next morning. To collect data, he analyzed nearly 24,000 dreams, catalogued in two databases at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Bridgewater State College in Massa-chusetts. His study suggested that specific colors represent particular emotions.
But, as with symbols and action, one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to interpretation. Every dreamer draws on a different palette to reflect personal associations. “Using color is your brain’s way of painting your dreams with your emotion,” says Hoss, who just published his results in Dream Language (Inner source, 2005).
Some researchers scoff at the need for computers or even therapists to interpret dreams. Psychologist Gayle Delaney, founding president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, believes that dreamers themselves are the best interpreters of their time in dreamland.
What Dreams Can Do for You
Psychologists have long known that people can solve their problems at work and home by “sleeping on it.” The challenge has always been to train yourself to dream up the solutions. Deirdre Barrett, an assistant psychology professor at Harvard Medical School and editor of the journal Dreaming, advises individuals to ponder questions just before falling asleep (Should I take this job? Should I marry that guy?) and then let the subconscious provide the answers. “I’ve known artists looking for inspiration who simply dream up a future show of their art and wake up with plenty of new painting ideas,” says Barrett. “More and more people are learning these techniques to control their dreams.”
Some researchers believe that you can guide your dreams while youre sleeping. In recent years, Stephen LaBerge, has pioneered a way of directing the sleeping mind through “lucid dreaming,” in which a sleeping person realizes he or she is dreaming while it is happening. Lucid dreamers can experience fantasy adventures—like flying to the moon or traveling through time—while being fully aware that theyre dreaming. “It’s like a poor man’s Tahiti,” says LaBerge, a psycho physiologist who directs the Lucidity Institute in Palo Alto, California. “Just being in a lucid dream is a turn-on for people.”
According to LaBerge, lucid dreamers can use the experience for a variety of purposes: problem solving, developing creative ideas and healing. Patricia Keelin, a 55-year-old graphic cartographer from northern California, has used lucid dreaming for everything from talking to her longdead father to gorging on sweets. “Chocolate always tastes better in a lucid dream because you don’t have to worry about the calories,” she says. A weak swimmer in her waking life, she often likes to go skin diving when she realizes she’s having a lucid dream, diving to the bottom of the dream ocean without worrying about breathing (or her swimming skills). “It’s exhilarating,” she says. “Lucid dreaming is great because it’s free and available to everybody.”
Well, not entirely free. Although everyone has the potential to dream lucidly, it rarely happens routinely without special training or temperament.
Indeed, your dreams are like private movies where you are the star, director and writer all at once. And as the latest research indicates, you are also the most insightful movie critic—without the need of a couch. The best interpreter of your dreams is you.
1. The red and black colors that dominate the anthropologist’s dream .
A) combine a sign of his experiencing difficult times
B) spiked when he is unpleasant with things around
C) is the reflection of what he thought
D) is nothing but imagination
2. The passage mainly reveals .
A) how dreams occur during our sleeping
B) why we will dream and the outcome of dreaming at night
C) some of the newest discoveries on dreams and the role dreaming plays in our lives
D) dreaming has very deep influence on our life
3. Dreaming is .
A) more conscious than subconscious
B) a mood regulatory system
C) less conscious than subconscious
D) the conscious mind
4. Studies found that it is likely for people to dream of .
A) new images combined with old emotional experiences
B) old images combined with new emotional experiences
C) images irrelevant with old emotional experiences
D) images irrelevant with new emotional experiences
5. By observing dreams of 30 divorced adults, Cartwright found that .
A) overcoming the marriage problems is difficult for the people who dreams a lot at night
B) overcoming marriage problems is very easy for the spouse who just have been married
C) the marriage problems exist in any spouse who have no chance of overcoming marriage problems
D) those having the best chance of overcoming marriage problems usually were angry at their spouse in dreams
6. Koninck believes that .
A) each person is the best dream interpreter of his own dreams
B) any person can interpret others’dreams
C) dreaming is very easy to interpret
D) no one can interpret his own dream
7. Gayle Delan holds that .
A) therapists are very helpful to interpret the dreams
B) it is ridiculous to use computer to interpret the dreams
C) computers and therapists are most helpful in dreaminterpretation
D) computers are very helpful to interpret the dreams
8. Lucid dreaming is different from dreams of common belief in that it enables people to .
9. For anyone intends to dream lucidly, is necessary.
10. The latest research indicates that play the combined role of actor, director, writer, or even critic in the private movies of your dreams.
Test 2—Test 5 |
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