Preparing for Civil Service Examination: Reading Comprehension Practice 7

Do you often worry about how to improve your reading comprehension level efficiently? Now, our website has carefully prepared a series of reading comprehension questions closely related to Civil Service Examination, covering a wide range of topics and question types, aiming to hone your reading analysis and comprehension skills in all aspects.

Read the passages and answer the questions that follow. Good luck!

 

The intense preparation required for the law school admission test (LSAT) changes the structure of the brain, resulting in stronger connections between areas of the brain that play an important role in reasoning.

That’s the finding of University of California, Berkeley, neuroscientists who used diffusion tensor imaging to analyze the brains of 24 college students or recent graduates before and after 100 hours of LSAT training over three months.

The findings suggest that training people in reasoning skills can reinforce brain circuits involved in thinking and reasoning and might even help increase a person’s IQ scores, the researchers said.

“The fact that performance on the LSAT can be improved with practice is not new. People know that they can do better on the LSAT, which is why preparation courses exist,” study leader Allyson Mackey,
a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, said in a university news release.

“What we were interested in is whether and how the brain changes as a result of LSAT preparation, which we think is, fundamentally, reasoning training. We wanted to show that the ability to reason is malleable in adults,” she explained.

The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke funded the study, along with Blueprint Test Preparation, the release noted.

The study was published recently in the journal Frontiers in Neuroanatomy.

“A lot of people still believe that you are either smart or you are not, and sure, you can practice for a test, but you are not fundamentally changing your brain,” senior author Silvia Bunge, an associate professor in the UC Berkeley department of psychology and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, said in the news release.

“Our research provides a more positive message. How you perform on one of these tests is not necessarily predictive of your future success, it merely reflects your prior history of cognitive engagement, and potentially how prepared you are at this time to enter a graduate program or a law school, as opposed to how prepared you could ever be,” Bunge noted.

Another expert, John Gabrieli, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, agreed.

“I think this is an exciting discovery,” Gabrieli, who was not involved in the study, said in the news release. “It shows, with rigorous analysis, that brain pathways important for thinking and reasoning remain plastic in adulthood, and that intensive, real-life educational experience that trains reasoning also alters the brain pathways that support reasoning ability,” he explained.

 

1. Which of the following best describes the tone of this passage?
a. passionate
b. despondent
c. articulate
d. opinionated
e. arrogant

Correct Answer: a

Answer Explanation:

Although the author never states an opinion, the enthusiasm about the scientists’ findings can only be regarded as passionate. Nowhere in the passage does the tone reflect despondency, making choice b incorrect. Articulation is not an adjective describing tone, making choice c incorrect. The article is not opinionated and the tone is not arrogant, making choices d and e incorrect.

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2. All the following institutions were included in the study EXCEPT:
a. University of California at Berkeley
b. Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute
c. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
d. The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
e. Blueprint Test Preparation

Correct Answer: c

Answer Explanation:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology commented on the study, but was not directly involved in it. The study was conducted at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute located at the University of California at Berkeley, making choices a and b incorrect. Both the U.S. Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and Blueprint Test Preparation funded the study, making choices d and e incorrect.

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3. The purpose of paragraph 3 is best described by which of the following?
a. to present more cumulative data
b. to introduce an argument that defies a theory
c. to introduce the comparative study of two different theories
d. to paraphrase the hypothesis
e. none of the above

Correct Answer: d

Answer Explanation:

The third paragraph is a good paraphrase of the first paragraph, both of which could be seen as the hypothesis, so the answer cannot be choice e. Choice a is incorrect because no cumulative data is presented in paragraph 3. The third paragraph does not present an argument, making choice b incorrect. Two different theories are not being presented here, only one, making choice c incorrect.

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