A
It is widely believed that humour is good for your health. However, most studies on humour and health show that by watching something humorous — comedy films, for example — you can just escape from the pain for a short time, or that humour just helps reduce signs of a disease. So far, no study has shown that humour can help a person recover from a serious illness.
One way to study the relationship between humour and health is looking at the health of people who use humour as part of their jobs: comedians and improv(即兴表演) artists, for example. Not only do they use humour as part of their work, but also they show the highest levels of humour ability. So if humour is really good for our health, we can anticipate that comedians benefit the most from it.
Although it is often said that humour can make people live longer, research has actually found the opposite to be true. One study found that comedians and humour writers actually died younger compared with other famous people who were not performers. However, these studies were somewhat limited, because most of the comedians were men and already dead. And many famous people often live very unhealthy lives, and the comedians might have died from reasons such as heavy drinking or smoking.
My colleagues and I decided to take a different way. We collected data(数据) from 491 improv artist students — 224 women and 267 men — all alive. We compared this improv group with 795 noncomedians, who were matched in age, sex, and education.
We asked participants from both groups to tell us how many diseases they had had in the past three years and how long they had lasted. The improv artists reported that they had had many more diseases, and that these diseases had lasted longer compared with the control group. So our study adds further evidence to the conclusion made by the studies before.
( )1.What do most studies on humour and health show about humour?
A．It doesn't really reduce signs of diseases.
B．It just helps reduce people's pain for a while.
C．It can't really make people feel comfortable.
D．It can help one recover from a serious disease.
( )2.What does the underlined word “anticipate” in Paragraph 2 mean?
A．Predict. B．Notice.
C．Understand. D．Explain.
( )3.What can we know about the improv artists from the author's research?
A．They had more unhealthy habits.
B．They benefited more from humour.
C．They were more likely to get diseases.
D．They did better in taking care of themselves.
【语篇解读】本文是一篇说明文。文章主要讲了人们普遍认为幽默对我们的健康有益，但研究发现，幽默对我们健康的益处并没有那么大。
1. B 细节理解题。根据第一段中的 “However, most studies on humour and health show that by watching something humorous—comedy films, for example — you can just escape from the pain for a short time.”可知，幽默只能暂时帮助人们减轻痛苦。
2. A 词义猜测题。根据第二段中的 “So if humour is really good for our health.”可知，在这种情况，我们应该“预测”喜剧演员从幽默中受益最大。
3. C 细节理解题。根据最后一段中的 “The improv artists reported that they had had many more diseases, and that these diseases had lasted longer compared with the control group.”可知，跟一般人相比，这些喜剧演员更容易得疾病。
