Table of Contents
BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 208
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 208 – PASSAGE – 2
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 208
READING PASSAGE – 2
Fears
A. Over the years, most people acquire a repertoire of skills for coping with a range of frightening situations. Scientists are addressing this problem by identifying specific brain processes that regulate fear and its associated behaviors. Despite the availability of noninvasive imaging techniques, such information is still extremely difficult to obtain in humans. Hence, they have turned the attention to another primate, the rhesus monkey.
These animals undergo many of the same physiological and psychological developmental stages that humans do, but in a more compressed time span. As they gained more insight into the nature and operation of neural circuits that modulate fear in monkeys, it should be possible to pinpoint the brain processes that cause inordinate anxiety in people and to devise new therapies to counteract it.
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B. For 20 years, Ned Kalin, a psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has studied fear in people and monkeys. He explained that monkeys have a palette of fearful, or defensive, behaviors that are controlled by different brain mechanisms. Each winter, Kalin and colleagues Steven Shelton and John Berard study a free-living colony of primates called Rhesus macaques on a 38-acre islet called Cayo Santiago of the coast of Puerto Rico. Over the years, they noticed that the monkeys responded differently to different threats.
C. Working in a lab back in Madison, Kalin and Shelton put young macaques through three tests, and saw three adaptive fearful responses: when left alone for 10 minutes, most of the monkeys started cooing to attract their mother’s attention. Being separated from mother terrifies infant primates, so this is a smart, adaptive reaction. When a human intruder entered the room and looked away from the monkey, most of the animals skulked toward the back of their cage and froze.
Such freezing minimizes the chance of being detected and gives the animal time to figure out what to do. When a person stared expressionless at the monkey, the animal started a kind of “defensive aggression” reaction, with deep barking, bared teeth, and rattling the cage. Staring, Kalin notes, can be very threatening, since it can signify that a predator has located you or that another member of your species is trying to dominate you.
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D. So far, so good. But why did some monkeys freeze for a few seconds, and others for minutes at a time? Why did 5 percent of the preadolescent monkeys freeze when they were stared at, while 95 percent got aggressive? To further define these types of fearful behavior, Kalin gave small amounts of drugs to the monkeys. He found that opiates inhibited the cooing for the mother, which made sense since opiates made naturally by the body are known to affect attachment behavior, but not the aggressive barking. Anti-anxiety drugs like diazepam, or valium, had little or no affect on cooing, but it did decrease barking and freezing.
E. What does all this mean for people plagued by fear and anxiety disorders? For one thing, that fearful responses combine several elements; fear is not one single thing. For another, the problem is not simply having too much emotion, Kalin says, but of having the wrong one, or being unable to hit the “off” switch. “People in the past have conceptualized problems of emotions as being overly intense responses. But we find animals that are unable to turn off a specific reaction, or which express the wrong reaction”.
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F. Based on earlier observations in humans, the scientists knew that humans carry two versions of the gene, long and short. Some people have two long versions (L/L), but the people with one of each (S/L) are known to experience a higher incidence of social anxiety and other behaviors. Scientists from Duke University Medical Center conducted three experiments with male monkeys that had been genotyped for the S/L or L/L variants to learn how genetic variation might influence their responses to social rewards and punishments.
They found that monkeys with one copy of the short gene spent less time gazing at images of the face and eyes of other monkeys, were less likely to engage in risk-taking behavior, and less likely to want to view a picture of a high-status male. “For both human and non-human primates, faces and eyes are rich source of social information, and it’s well established that humans tend to direct visual attention to faces, especially the eye region”, Platt said. “Rhesus monkeys live in highly despotic societies, and convey social rank information by making threats and showing dominant and submissive behaviors”.
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G. In a second experiment, the S/L monkeys were less willing to take risks after they were primed with the faces of high-status males. They more often chose a “safe” option of a fixed volume of juice, rather than the chance for a greater or lesser amount, the “risky” choice. Previous studies have found that inducing fear in human subjects makes them more risk-averse.
H. The final experiment was a pay-per-view set-up. The monkeys could have a juice reward paired with an image. The images were of high-status male faces, low-status male faces, or a gray square. The L/L monkeys actually had to be paid juice to view the dominant males, while the S/L monkeys gave up juice for a look at these faces.
I. Altogether, data showed that genetic variation does contribute to social reward and punishment in macaques, and thus shapes social behavior in both humans and rhesus macaques. This study confirms rhesus monkeys can serve as a model of what goes on in our brains, even in the case of social behavior.
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Questions 14-18
Reading Passage 3 contains 9 paragraphs A –I.
Which paragraphs state the following information?
Write the appropriate letters A-I in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.
14. Classification of responses to fear.
15. Face of high-status males cause greater fear in the S/L monkey.
16. Facial expressions contain social information.
17. Fear is not a simple emotion.
18. Medicine does not work in some cases.
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Questions 19-22
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
19 What do humans and animals differ while they share the similar physiological and psychological developmental stages?
20 What reaction did the monkey start with when they were gazed at expressionless?
21 How many preadolescent monkeys became aggressive when they were facing domination from another member of their own species?
22 According to the passage, what determines social behavior in both humans and monkeys?
Questions 23-27
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
In order to understand the brain processes that cause (23)……….. in people, and how genetic variation might influence social behavior, scientists first conducted three experiments to gain more insight into fear in monkeys. For both human and monkeys, (24)……….. can convey social information. It was found that monkeys with one copy of the short gene were less likely to look at the face of a (25)……….. and to take a risk. The monkey without a (26)……….. would sight on dominant males if they were rewarded, while the (27)……….. monkeys waived the reward.
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ANSWERS ARE BELOW
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ANSWERS
14. C
15. G
16. F
17. E
18. D
19. TIME SPAN
20. DEFENSIVE AGGRESSION
21. 95 PERCENT
22. GENETIC VARIATION
23. INORDINATE ANXIETY
24. FACES AND EYES
25. HIGH-STATUS MALE
26. SHORT GENE
27. S/L
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