A
Smile! It makes everyone in the room feel better because they, consciously or unconsciously, are smiling with you. Growing evidence shows that an instinct for facial mimicry(模仿)allows us to experience other people's feelings. If we can't mirror another person's face, it limits our ability to read and properly react to their expressions. A review of this emotional mirroring appears on February 11 in Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
In their paper, Paula Niedenthal and Adrienne Wood, social psychologists at the University of Wisconsin, describe how people in social situations copy others' facial expressions to create emotional responses in themselves. For example, if you're with a friend who looks sad, you might “try on” that sad face yourself without realizing you're doing so. In “trying on” your friend's expression, it helps you to recognize what they're feeling by connecting it with times in the past when you made that expression. Humans get this emotional meaning from facial expressions in a matter of only a few hundred milliseconds.
“You reflect on your emotional feelings and then you produce some sort of recognition judgment, and the most important thing that results in is that you take the appropriate action—you approach the person or you avoid the person，” Niedenthal says. “Your own emotional reaction to the face changes your understanding of how you see the face in such a way that provides you with more information about what it means.”
A person's ability to recognize and “share” others' emotions can be prevented when they can't mimic faces. This is a common complaint for people with motor diseases, like facial paralysis(瘫痪) from a stroke, or even due to nerve damage from plastic surgery. Niedenthal notes that the same would not be true for people who suffer from paralysis from birth, because if you had no ability to mimic facial expressions, you would have developed another way of interpreting emotions.
Niedenthal next wants to explore what part in the brain is functioning to help with facial expression recognition. A better understanding of that part, she says, will give us a better idea of how to treat related disorders.
( C )21．According to the passage, facial mimicry helps ________．
A．convey one's own feelings clearly
B．change others' emotions quickly
C．respond to others' expressions properly
D．develop friendship with others easily
( B )22．Which parts explain how people copy others' facial expressions?
A．Paragraphs 1 and 2.
B．Paragraphs 2 and 3.
C．Paragraphs 3 and 4.
D．Paragraphs 4 and 5.
( D )23．According to Niedenthal, what will be the next focus of the study?
A．When is the best time to treat brain disorders.
B．How many kinds of facial expressions people have.
C．How our brain helps us with emotional mirroring.
D．What part in the brain helps recognize facial expressions.
( D )24．What is the author's purpose in writing the passage?
A．To discuss why people like smiling to others.
B．To draw people's attention to those with motor diseases.
C．To introduce a new trend in facial expression recognition.
D．To explain how people mirror others' facial expressions.
答案及解析：
【语篇解读】文章分析了人们是如何进行面部模仿的，理解面部识别能有助于某些疾病的治疗。
21．C 推理判断题。由第一段倒数第二句可推知，面部模仿有助于对别人的面部表情作出合理反应(to read and properly react to their expressions)。故选C项。
22．B 主旨大意题。第2段和第3段解释了人们是如何模仿别人的面部表情的。故选B项。
23．D 细节理解题。由倒数第一段第一句可知，下一步研究的重点是大脑中哪些部分帮助识别面部表情。故选D项。
24．D 推理判断题。纵观全文可以看出，文章主要解释了人们是如何进行面部模仿的，也就是D项所说的“To explain how people mirror others' facial expressions.”。
