Question

Learning Colour Words

In the first few years of their lives, children brought up in English-speaking homes successfully master the use of hundreds of words, including those for objects, actions, emotions, and many other aspects of the physical world. However, when it comes to learning colour words, the same children perform very badly. If shown a blue cup and asked about its colour, typical two-year-olds seem as likely to come up with “red” as “blue”.

Cognitive (認(rèn)知) scientists at Stanford University in California supposed that children's inability at colour-word learning may be directly linked to the way these words are used in English. They are used mostly in pre-nominal position (e. g. “blue cup”), in contrast to post-nominal position (e. g. “The cup is blue. ”). The difficulty children have may simply come down to the challenge of having to make predictions from colour words to the objects they refer to, rather than from the objects to the colour words.

To explore this idea further, the research team recruited (招募) 40 English children aged between 23 and 29 months and carried out a three-period experiment. It included a pre-test, followed by training in the use of colour words, and finally a post-test that was the same to the pre-test. The pre- and post- test materials contained six objects that were unfamiliar to the children. There were three examples of each object in each of three colours-red, yellow and blue. The objects were presented on trays (托盤(pán)), and in both tests, the children were asked to pick out objects in response to requests in which the colour word was either a pre-nominal ( “Which is the red one?”) or a post-nominal ( “Which one is red?”).

In the training, the children were introduced to five sets of familiar items (balls, cups, crayons, glasses,and toy bears) in each of the three colours. Half the children were presented with the items one by one and heard them labeled with colour words used pre-nominally, while the other half were introduced to the same items described with a post-nominal colour word. After the training, the children repeated the selection task on the novel items in the post-test. Correct choices on items that were consistent (一致的) across the pre-and post-tests were used to measure children's colour knowledge.

According to the assessment, children's performance was consistent when they were both trained and tested on post-nominal adjectives, and worst when trained on pre-nominal adjectives and tested on post-nominal adjectives. Comparing the pre-and post-test scores across each condition showed a significant decline in performance when children were both pre-and post-tested with questions that placed the colour words pre-nominally.

1.What is the purpose of Paragraph 2?

A.To present a phenomenon. B.To make a contrast.

C.To give a possible explanation. D.To provide an example.

2.What can we learn about the experiment from the passage?

A.The children had to place the pre-and post-test objects onto coloured trays.

B.The children were presented with the same objects in the pre-and post-tests.

C.Pre-nominal questions were less used than post-nominal questions in the training.

D.The researchers aimed to look for consistencies in children's knowledge of word order.

3.The outcome of the experiment shows that ______.

A.children are unable to accurately sort objects by colour.

B.children trained on pre-nominal adjectives perform well.

C.children learn colour words rapidly in post-nominal position.

D.children can make predictions from the objects to the colour words.

Answer 1