C
In 1874Francis Galton,a British professor, analysed a sample of English scientists and found the vast majority to be first-bom sons. This led him to theorise that first-born children enjoyed a special level of attention from their parents that allowed them to advance intellectually. Half a century later Alfred Adler, an Austrian psychologist, made a similar argument relating to personality.
First-born children, he suggested, were more diligent, while the later-bom were more outgoing and emotionally stable. Many subsequent studies have explored these ideas, but their findings have been varied-some supporting and some rejecting the original conclusions.
The main problem with the previous studies is that they were too small-often limited to a few dozen individuals. This would be true even if the statistical methods needed to analyse the data were simple, but they are not. Distinguishing birth-order effects from those caused by family size complicates matters, meaning still bigger samples must be analysed to obtain meaningful results.
To overcome the limitation of these earlier studies, German social scientist Dr. Helmet Schmukle and his colleagues analysed three huge sets of data from America, Britain and Germany.
These data sets, though collected for other purposes, included personality and intelligence tests on 20,186 people at different stages of their lives. The American tests were on individuals aged between 29 and 35. The British tests were conducted on 50-year-olds. The German tests ran the whole span of adult life, from 18 to 98.
Birth order, they found, had no effect on personality: first-borns were no more, nor less, likely than their younger siblings to be hardworking, outgoing or anxious. But it did affect intelligence. In a family with two children, the first child was more intelligent than the second 60% of the time, rather than the 50% that would be expected by chance. On average, this translated to a difference of 1.5 IQ points between first and second siblings. That figure agrees with previous studies, and thus looks confirmed.
It is, nevertheless, quite a small difference-and whether it is enough to account for Galton's original observation is unclear. In any event, it is certainly not deterministic. Galton was the youngest of nine.
28.Alfred Adler concluded that first-born children were_______.
A. more stable B. more sociable
C. more intelligentD. more hardworking
29.What does the underlined “they”in paragraph 2refer to？
A. The data.B. The analyses.
C. The previous studies.D. The statistical methods.
30.Why was Schmukle's study considered superior to previous research？
A. It involved a wider age range. B. It had a much larger sample size.
C. It included a larger number of countries.
D. It was conducted over a longer period of time.
31.Why does the author mention Galton's family background in the last paragraph？
A. To confirm Galton's difficult upbringing.
B. To suggest Galton's theory may not be correct.
C. To compare his experience with Galton's parents.
D. To explain why Galton was interested in birth order.
D
Photography has opened our eyes to a multitude of beauties, things we literally could not have seen before the invention of the frozen image.It has greatly expanded our notion of what is beautiful, what is aesthetically（审美上）pleasing.Items formerly considered trivial, and not worth an artist's paint, have been revealed and honored by the photograph:things as ordinary as a fence post, a chair, a vegetable.And as technology has developed, photographers have explored completely new points of view；those of the microscope, the eagle, the cosmos.
What is it that delights the human eye and allows us to claim that a photograph is beautiful？
Photography depends on the trinity of light, composition, and moment.Light literally makes the recording of an image possible, but in the right hands, light in a photograph can make the image soar.The same is true with composition.What the photographer chooses to keep in or out of the frame is all that we will ever see-but that combination is vital.And the moment that the shutter is pressed, when an instant is frozen in time, provides the whole image with meaning.When the three-light, composition, and moment-are in balance, there is visual magic.
Light, composition, and moment come together in a photograph to bring us the ultimate reality:a view of the world unknown prior to the invention of the camera. Before photography, the basic artistic rules of painting were rarely broken. Images were made to please, not to capture reality. But as photography evolved, painterly rules were often rejected in the pursuit of fresh vision.
Photographers became interested in the real world, good and bad, and it was the accidental detail that was celebrated. Photography invited the world to see with new eyes-to see photographically-and all of the arts have drawn new inspiration from this change.
With these basic aesthetic tools, photographers have evolved from scientists longing to "fix"an image-any image-to artistic revolutionaries. Photographs have created a new way of seeing, changed our ideas of beauty and, most importantly, made art more democratic. They have given us visual proof that the world is grander than we imagined, and that there is beauty, often overlooked, in nearly everything.
32.Before the invention of photography, which of the following was least likely to appear in an artistic work?
A. A great person.B. A lovely insect.
C. A grand building.D. A beautiful landscape
33.What is the function of paragraph 2?
A. To argue that photographic beauty is subjective
B. To explain the evolution of the concept of beauty.
C. To describe the elements that make a successful photo.
D. To illustrate different types of photographic techniques.
34.How has photography affected other art forms?
A. It has reduced their popularity. B. It has forced them to change their rules.
C. It has changed their methods of composition.
D. It has provided them with new points of view.
35.What does the author mean by saying photography has"made art more democratic"?
A. It has expanded the concept of artistic beauty.
B. It has challenged the status of traditional art forms.
C. It has enabled the development of new artistic tools.
D. It has allowed more people to take part in creative activities.