2024英语寒假作业·高一年级 第1周第5天（外刊精读）（含解析）

2024英语寒假作业·高一年级 第1周 第5天 【外刊精读】 原文 Your night life prepares you for what’s to come. What are dreams for A handful of theories predominate. Sigmund Freud famously contended that they reveal hidden truths and wishes. More recent research suggests that they may help us process intense emotions, or perhaps sort through and consolidate memories, or make sense of random neuron activity, or rehearse responses to threatening situations. Others argue that dreams have no evolutionary function, but simply dramatize personal concerns. Despite being largely unsupported by evidence, Freud’s view maintains a strong following around the world. Researchers found that students in the U.S., South Korea, and India were much more likely to say that dreams reveal hidden truths than to endorse better-substantiated theories. Relatedly, people put great stock in their dreams: In the same study, respondents said that dreaming about a plane crash would cause them more anxiety than an official warning about a terrorist attack. Even if dreams can’t foretell the future, they seem to expose our shared fascinations. The majority of dreams occur during REM sleep cycles, of which the average person has four or five a night. Anxiety is also rife: A study of Canadian university students found the most common dream topics to be school, falling, being chased, and arriving too late for something. For all the commonalities dreams exhibit, they vary across time — people who grew up watching black-and-white TV are more likely to dream in black and white — and culture. A 1958 study determined that compared with Japanese people, Americans dreamed more about being locked up, losing a loved one, finding money, being inappropriately dressed or nude, or encountering an insane person. Japanese people were more likely to dream about school, trying repeatedly to do something, being paralyzed with fear, or “wild, violent beasts.” (For their part, beasts almost certainly have nightmares too: Just about all mammals are thought to dream, as are birds, some lizards, and — unique among invertebrates — cuttlefish. The dreamiest member of the animal kingdom is the platypus, which logs up to eight hours of REM sleep a day.) If human dreams sound bleak, bear in mind that even negative ones can have positive effects. In a study of students taking a French medical-school entrance exam, 60 percent of the dreams they had beforehand involved a problem with the exam, such as being late or leaving an answer blank. But those who reported dreams about the exam, even bad ones, did better on it than those who didn’t. So the next time you dream about an education-related experience in which you are both falling and being chased, don’t worry: It’s probably totally meaningless. Then again, your brain might be practicing so you’ll be ready if such an event ever comes to pass. （选自《大西洋月刊》） 文本精读 Your night life (结合全文可知是指晚上梦中的内容场景等) prepares you for what’s ... ...