Professor Smith recently persuaded 35 people, 23 of them women, tokeep a diary of all their absent-minded actions for a fortnight.When he came to analyze theirembarrassing lapses (差错) in a scientific report, he wassurprised to find that nearly all of them fell into a few groupings.Nor did the lapses appear to be entirely random (随机的).

One of the women, for instance, on leaving her house for work onemorning threw her dog her earrings and tried to {ix a dog biscuit on her ear."The explanation for this is thatthe brain is like a computer," explains the professor."People programme themselves to do certain activities regularly.It was the woman's custom every morning to throw her dog twobiscuits and then put on her earrings.But somehow theaction got reversed in the programme." About onein twenty of the incidents the volunteers reported were these "programmeassembly failures".

Altogether the volunteers logged 433 unintentional actions thatthey found themselves doing—an average of twelve each.There appear to be peak periods in the day when we are at ourzaniest (荒谬可笑的).These are twohours some time between eight a.m.and noon,between four and six p.m.with a smaller peak between eight and ten p.m."Among men the peak seems to be when a changeover in brain‘programmes’ occurs, as for instance between going to and from work." Women on average reported slightly more lapse-12.5comparedwith 10.9 for men probably because they were more reliable reporters.

A startling finding of the research is that the absent-mindedactivity is a hazard of do-ing things in which we are skilled.Normally, you would expect thatskill reduces the num-ber of errors we make.But tryingto avoid silly slips by concentrating more could make things a lot worse, evendangerous.

21.In his study Professor Smith asked the subjects __________.

A.to keep track of people who tended to forget things

B.to report their embarrassing lapses at random

C.to analyze their awkward experiences scientifically

D.to keep a record of what they did unintentionally

答案：D

22.Professor Smith discovered that__________.

A.certain patterns can be identified in the recorded incidents

B.many people are too embarrassed to admit their absent-mindedness

C.men tend to be more absent-minded than women

D.absent-mindedness is an excusable human weakness

答案：A

23."Programme assembly failures"(Para.2) refers to the phenomenon that people__________.

A.often fail to programme their routines beforehand

B.tend to make mistakes when they are in a hurry

C.unconsciously change the sequence of doing things

D.are likely to mess things up if they are too tired

答案：C

24.We learn from the third paragraph that __________.

A.absent-mindedness tends to occur during certain hours of the day

B.women are very careful to perform actions during peak periods

C.women experience more peak periods of absent-mindedness

D.men's absent-mindedness often results in funny situations

答案：A

25.It can be concluded from the passage that __________.

A.people should avoid doing important things during peak periods oflapses

B.hazards can be avoided when people do things they are good at

C.people should be careful when programming their actions

D.lapses cannot always be attributed to lack of concentration

答案：D

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