阅读理解。
Professor Reason recently persuaded 35 people to keep a diary of all their absent-minded actions for
two weeks. When he came to analyse their embarrassing errors, he was surprised to find that nearly all
of them fell into a few groups.
One of the women, for instance, on leaving her house for work one morning threw her pet dog her
ear-rings and tried to fix a dog biscuit on her ear."the explanation for this is that the 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 two biscuits and then put on her ear-rings.
But somehow the action got reversed (颠倒) in the programme." About one in twenty of the incidents
the volunteers reported were these "programme assembly failures."
Twenty per cent of all errors were "test failures"-primarily due to not verifying the progress of what
the body was doing. A man about to get his car out of the garage passed through the back yard where his
garden jacket and boots were kept, put them on --- much to his surprise. A woman victim reported:" I got
into the bath with my socks on."
The commonest problem was information " storage failures". People forgot the names of people whose
faces they knew, went into a room and forgot why they were there, mislaid something, or smoked a
cigarette without realizing it.
The research so far suggests that while the "central processor" of the brain is liberated from
second-to-second control of a well-practised routine, it must repeatedly switch back its attention at
important decision points to check that the action goes on as intended. Otherwise the activity may be
"captured" by another frequently and recently used programme, resulting in embarrassing errors.
1. The purpose of Professor Reason's research is ______.
A. to show the difference between men and women in their reasoning
B. to classify and explain some errors in human actions
C. to find the causes which lead to computer failures
D. to compare computer functions with brain workings
2. Which of the following might be grouped under" programme assembly failures"?
A. A woman went into a shop and forgot what to buy.
B. A man returning home after work left his key in the lock.
C. A lady fell as she was concentrating on each step her feet were taking.
D. An old man, with his shoes on, was trying to put on his socks.
3. The word verifying in paragraph 3 can be replaced by ______.
A. improving
B. changing
C. checking
D. stopping
4. According to the passage, the information "storage failures" refer to _______.
A. the destruction of information collecting system
B. the elimination of one's total memory
C. the temporary loss of part of one's memory
D. the separation of one's action from consciousness
