1998年6月英语四级 - 阅读理解A

Psychologist George Spilich and colleagues at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, decided to find out whether, as many smokers say, smoking helps them to “think and concentrate". Spilich put young non-smokers, active smokers and smokers deprived of cigarettes through a series of tests.
马里兰州切斯特敦华盛顿学院的心理学家George Spilich和同事们决定想弄清楚是否如许多吸烟者所说，吸烟有助于他们“思考和集中注意力”。Spilich对年轻的非吸烟者、积极吸烟者和被禁止吸烟的吸烟者进行了一系列测试。

In the first test, each subject sat before a computer screen and pressed a key as soon as he or she recognized a target letter among a grouping of 96. In this simple test, smokers, deprived smokers and non-smokers performed equally well.
在第一次测试中，每个试验对象坐在电脑屏幕前，如果从96个字母中认出目标字母就按键。在这个简单的测试中，吸烟者、禁止吸烟者和非吸烟者的表现同样出色。

The next test was more complex, requiring all to scan sequences of 20 identical letters and respond the instant one of the letters transformed into a different one. Non-smokers were faster, but under the stimulation of nicotine, active smokers were faster than deprived smokers.
下一个测试更为复杂，要求所有人扫描20个相同字母的序列，并在其中一个字母转换为另一个字母的瞬间做出响应。非吸烟者的速度更快，但在尼古丁的刺激下，积极吸烟者比禁止吸烟者快。

In the third test of short-term memory, non-smokers made the fewest errors, but deprived smokers committed fewer errors than active smokers.
在第三项测试短期记忆中，非吸烟者犯错最少，但禁止吸烟者犯的错比积极吸烟者少。

The fourth test required people to read a passage, then answer questions about it. Non-smokers remembered 19 percent more of the most important information than active smokers, and deprived smokers bested those who had smoked a cigarette just before testing. Active smokers tended not only to have poorer memories but also had trouble separating important information from insignificant details.
第四项测试要求人们阅读一段文章，然后回答有关问题。非吸烟者比积极吸烟者记住的最重要信息要多19%，而禁止吸烟者比那些测试前吸过烟的人记得更多。积极吸烟者不仅记忆力较差，而且难以将重要信息与无关紧要的细节区分开来。

“As our tests became more complex,” sums up Spilich, “non-smokers performed better than smokers by wider and wider margins”. He predicts, “smokers might perform adequately at many jobs-until they got complicated. A smoking airline pilot could fly adequately if no problems arose, but if something went wrong, smoking might damage his mental capacity.”
Spilich总结道：“随着我们的测试变得越来越复杂，非吸烟者的表现比吸烟者好，差距越来越大。”他预测：“吸烟者可能会在许多不太复杂的工作中表现良好。如果没有问题，吸烟的航空公司飞行员可以顺利飞行，但如果出现问题，吸烟可能会损害他的精神能力。”