Brains playing tricks on our minds阅读理解

Brains playing tricks on our minds
——The Mandela effect: what you remember may not be correct
词数 292 建议阅读时间 6分钟
Do you have full confidence in your memory? There has been a discussion about whether it is shi or si in the sentence “Thus when Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man...”(“故天将降大任于是/斯人也”).
Most people voted si as what they learned at school. However, People’s Education Press, a leading publisher of Chinese textbooks, claimed on Oct 26 that all its textbooks say shi.
Supporters of si feel shocked and say they’ve experienced the “Mandela Effect” –the situation in which a large number of people believe that an event occurred when it didn’t.
Many people believed that former South African president Nelson Mandela died in the 1980s in prison. However, Mandela was alive and well, eventually passing away in 2013. US researcher Fiona Broome created a website to detail her observations of this public phenomenon, coining the term.
Some often joke that our memories have been changed by a strange force. In fact, psychologists (心理学家) have looked into the reasons for the Mandela Effect, as reported on the US-based website Verywell Mind. For example, your mind may fill in gaps missing in your memory to make more sense of it, which is called confabulation (虚构症). However, try not to feel bad – this is not lying, but rather remembering details that never happened.
The internet may be another reason why we tend to have Mandela Effect events, as the news we read can be false from the beginning. In 2018, Science journal published a study of over 100,000 news stories discussed across Twitter. It showed that false news can spread faster and reach more people than the truth. As a powerful way to spread information, the internet might be the main reason for falsehoods to enter our minds.
Choose the best answer:
1. What is the author’s purpose of mentioning the discussion about a saying?
A. To provide a solution to the discussion.
B. To show our memories can be wrong.
C. To raise readers’ interest in confabulation.
D. To lead up to the topic of the Mandela Effect.
2. Which is closest in meaning to the underlined word “coining” in paragraph 4?
A. Inventing.
B. Borrowing.
C. Describing.
D. Correcting.
3. What can we learn about the “Mandela Effect” from the text?
A. It refers to people’s different attitudes to a particular event.
B. It can be explained from a psychological perspective.
C. It can have a big influence on people’s health.
D. It can be improved by remembering details clearly.
4. What is the last paragraph mainly about?
A. It is harder than ever to spot false news.
B. False news travels faster than true stories.
C. The internet causes more Mandela Effect events.
D. False information can be avoided from the beginning.
答案：
D. To lead up to the topic of the Mandela Effect.
A. Inventing.
B. It can be explained from a psychological perspective.
C. The internet causes more Mandela Effect events.。