READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Alfred Nobel

The man behind the Nobel Prize

A

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been honoring men and women from all corners of the globe for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for work in peace. The foundations for the prize were laid in 1895 when Alfred Nobel wrote his last will, leaving much of his wealth to the establishment of the Nobel Prize.

B

Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833. His father Immanuel Nobel was an engineer and inventor who built bridges and buildings in Stockholm. In connection with his construction work, Immanuel Nobel also experimented with different techniques for blasting rocks. Successful in his industrial and business ventures, Immanuel Nobel was able, in 1842, to bring his family to St. Petersburg. There, his sons were given a first-class education by private teachers. The training included natural sciences, languages and literature. By the age of 17, Alfred Nobel was fluent in Swedish, Russian, French, English and German. His primary interests were in English literature and poetry as well as in chemistry and physics. Alfred’s father, who wanted his sons to join his enterprise as engineers, disliked Alfred’s interest in poetry and found his son rather introverted.

C

In order to widen Alfred’s horizons, his father sent him abroad for further training in chemical engineering. During a two year period, Alfred Nobel visited Sweden, Germany, France and the United States. In Paris, the city he came to like best, he worked in the private laboratory of Professor T. J. Pclouze, a famous chemist. There he met the young Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero who, three years earlier, had invented nitroglycerine, a highly explosive liquid. But it was considered too dangerous to be of any practical use. Although its explosive power greatly exceeded that of gunpowder, the liquid would explode in a very unpredictable manner if subjected to heat and pressure. Alfred Nobel became very interested in nitroglycerine and how it could be put to practical use in construction work. He also realized that the safety problems had to be solved and a method had to be developed for the controlled detonation of nitroglycerine.

D

After his return to Sweden in 1863, Alfred Nobel concentrated on developing nitroglycerine as an explosive. Several explosions, including one (1864) in which his brother Emil and several other persons were killed, convinced the authorities that nitroglycerine production was exceedingly dangerous. They forbade further experimentation with nitroglycerine within the Stockholm city limits and Alfred Nobel had to move his experimentation to a barge anchored on Lake Malaren. Alfred was not discouraged and in 1864 he was able to start mass production of nitroglycerine. To make the handling of nitroglycerine safer Alfred Nobel experimented with different additives. He soon found that mixing nitroglycerine with kieselguhr would turn the liquid into a paste which could be shaped into rods of a size and form suitable for insertion into drilling holes. In 1867 he patented this material under the name of dynamite. To be able to detonate the dynamite rods he also invented a detonator (blasting cap) which could be ignited by lighting a fuse. These inventions were made at the same time as the pneumatic drill came into general use. Together these inventions drastically reduced the cost of blasting rock, drilling tunnels, building canals and many other forms of construction work.

E

The market for dynamite and detonating caps grew very rapidly and Alfred Nobel also proved himself to be a very skillful entrepreneur and businessman. Over the years he founded factories and laboratories in some 90 different places in more than 20 countries. Although he lived in Paris much of his life he was constantly traveling. When he was not traveling or engaging in business activities Nobel himself worked intensively in his various laboratories, first in Stockholm and later in other places. He focused on the development of explosives technology as well as other chemical inventions including such materials as synthetic rubber and leather, artificial silk, etc. By the time of his death in 18%, he had 355 patents.

F

Intensive work and travel did not leave much time for private life. At the age of 43, he was feeling like an old man. At this time he advertised in a newspaper “Wealthy, highly-educated elderly gentleman seeks the lady of mature age, versed in languages, as secretary and supervisor of household.” The most qualified applicant turned out to be an Austrian woman, Countess Bertha Kinsky. After working a very short time for Nobel she decided to return to Austria to marry Count Arthur von Suttner. In spite of this Alfred Nobel and Bertha von Suttner remained friends and kept writing letters to each other for decades. Over the years Bertha von Suttner became increasingly critical of the arms race. She wrote a famous book, Lay Down Your Arms and became a prominent figure in the peace movement. No doubt this influenced Alfred Nobel when he wrote his final will which was to include a Prize for persons or organizations who promoted peace. Several years after the death of Alfred Nobel, the Norwegian Storting (Parliament) decided to award the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize to Bertha von Suttner.

G

Alfred Nobel died in San Remo, Italy, on December 10, 1896. When his will was opened it came as a surprise that his fortune was to be used for Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace. The executors of his will were two young engineers, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist. They set about forming the Nobel Foundation as an organization to take care of the financial assets left by Nobel for this purpose and to coordinate the work of the Prize-Awarding Institutions. This was not without its difficulties since the will was contested by relatives and questioned by authorities in various countries.

H

Alfred Nobel’s greatness lay in his ability to combine the penetrating mind of the scientist and inventor with the forward-looking dynamism of the industrialist. Nobel was very interested in social and peace-related issues and held what were considered radical views in his era. He had a great interest in literature and wrote his own poetry and dramatic works. The Nobel Prizes became an extension and a fulfillment of his lifetime interests.

Questions 1-6

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                if the statement is true

FALSE               if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN     if the information is not given in the passage

1    The first Nobel Prize was awarded in 1895.

2    Nobel’s father wanted his son to have a better education than what he had had.

3    Nobel was an unsuccessful businessman.

4    Bertha von Suttner was selected by Nobel himself for the first peace prize.

5    The Nobel Foundation was established after the death of Nobel

6    Nobel’s social involvement was uncommon in the 1800s.

Questions 7-13

Complete the notes below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

Write your answers in boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet.

Education:

Having accumulated a great fortune in his business, Nobel’s father determined to give his son the best education and sent him abroad to be trained in 7………………… during Nobel’s study in Paris, he worked in a private laboratory, where he came in contact with a young engineer 8…………..…… and his invention nitroglycerine, a more powerful explosive than 9…………..………

Benefits in construction works:

Nobel became really interested in this new explosive and experimented on it. But nitroglycerine was too dangerous and was banned for experiments within the city of 10………………. So Nobel had to move his experiments to a lake. To make nitroglycerine easily usable, Nobel invented dynamite along with 11…………………. while in the meantime 12………………. became popular, all of which dramatically lowered the 13……………..…. of construction works.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. 

Implication of False Belief Experiments 2

A

A considerable amount of research since the mid 1980s has been concerned with what has been termed children’s theory of mind. This involves children’s ability to understand that people can have different beliefs and representations of the world– a capacity that is shown by four years of age. Furthermore, this ability appears to be absent in children with autism. The ability to work out that another person is thinking is clearly an important aspect of both cognitive and social development. Furthermore, one important explanation for autism is that children suffering from this condition do not have a theory of mind (TOM). Consequently, the development of children’s TOM has attracted considerable attention.

B

Wimmer and Perner devised a ‘false belief task’ to address this question. They used some toys to act out the following story. Maxi left some chocolate in a blue cupboard before he went out. When he was away his mother moved the chocolate to a green cupboard. Children were asked to predict where Maxi will look for his chocolate when he returns. Most children under four years gave the incorrect answer, that Maxi will look in the green cupboard. Those over four years tended to give the correct answer, that Maxi will look in the blue cupboard. The incorrect answers indicated that the younger children did not understand that Maxi’s beliefs and representations no longer matched the actual state of the world, and they failed to appreciate that Maxi will act on the basis of his beliefs rather than the way that the world is actually organised.

C

A simpler version of the Maxi task was devised by Baron-Cohen to take account of criticisms that younger children may have been affected by the complexity and too much information of the story in the task described above. For example, the child is shown two dolls, Sally and Anne, who have a basket and a box respectively. Sally also has a marble, which she places in her basket and then leaves to take a walk. While she is out of the room, Anne takes the marble from the basket, eventually putting it in the box. Sally return the sand child is then asked where Sally will look for the marble. The child passes the task if she answers that Sally will look in the basket, where she put the marble; the child fails the task if she answers that Sally will look in the box where the child knows the marble is hidden even though Sally cannot know since she did not see it hidden there. In order to pass the task, the child must be able to understand that another’s a mental representation of the situation is different from their own, and the child must be able to predict behavior based on that understanding. The results of research using false-belief tasks have been fairly consistent: most normally-developing children are unable to pass the tasks until around age four.

D

Leslie argues that, before 18 months, children treat the world in a literal way and rarely demonstrate pretence. He also argues that it is necessary for the cognitive system to distinguish between what is pretend and what is real. If children were not able to do this, they would not be able to distinguish between imagination and reality. Leslie suggested that this pretend play becomes possible because of the presence of a de-coupler that copies primary representations to secondary representations. For example, children, when pretending a banana is a telephone, would make a secondary representation of a banana. They would manipulate this representation and they would use their stored knowledge of ‘telephone’ to build on this pretence.

E

There is also evidence that social processes play a part in the development of TOM. Meins and her colleagues have found that what they term mindmindedness in a maternal speech to six-month-old infants is related to both securities of attachment and to TOM abilities. Mind Mindedness involves speech that discusses infants’ feelings and explains their behaviour in terms of mental stages (e.g. ‘you’re feeling hungry’)

F

Lewis investigated older children living in extended families in Crete and Cyprus. They found that children who socially interact with more adults, who have more friends, and who have more older siblings tend to pass TOM tasks at a slightly earlier age than other children. Furthermore, because young children are more likely to talk about their thoughts and feelings with peers than with their mothers, peer interaction may provide a special impetus to the development of a TOM. A similar point has been made by Dunn, who argues that peer interaction is more likely to contain pretend play and that it is likely to be more challenging because other children, unlike adults, do not make large adaptations to the communicative needs of other children.

G

In addition, there has been a concern that some aspects of the TOM approach underestimate children’s understanding of other people. After all, infants will point to objects apparently in an effort to change a person’s direction of gaze and interest; they can interact quite effectively with other people; they will express their ideas in opposition to the wishes of others, and they will show empathy for the feeling of others. All this suggests that they have some level of understanding that their own thoughts are different to those in another person’s mind. Evidence to support this position comes from a variety of sources. When a card with a different picture on each side is shown to a child and an adult sitting opposite her, then three years olds understand that they see a different picture to that seen by the adult.

H

Schatz studied the spontaneous speech of three-year-olds and found that these children used mental terms, and used them in circumstances where there was a contrast between, for example, not being sure where an object was located and finding it, or between pretending and reality. Thus the social abilities of children indicate that they are aware of the difference between mental states and external reality at ages younger than four.

I

A different explanation has been put forward by Harris. He proposed that children use ‘simulation’. This involves putting yourself in the other person’s position and then trying to predict what the other person would do. Thus success on false belief tasks can be explained by children trying to imagine what they would do if they were a character in the stories, rather than children being able to appreciate the beliefs of other people. Such thinking about situations that do not exist involves what is termed counterfactual reasoning.

Questions 14-20

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-G) with opinions or deeds below.

Write the appropriate letters A-G in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

A     Baron-Cohen

B     Meins

C     Wimmer and Perner

D     Lewis

E     Dunn

F     Schatz

G     Harris

14   Giving an alternative explanation that children may not be understanding other’s belief.

15   found that children under a certain age can tell the difference between reality and mentality

16   designed an experiment and drew the conclusion that young children under the age of 4 were unable to comprehend the real state of the world

17   found that children who get along with adults often comparatively got through the test more easily

18   revised an easier experiment rule out the possibility that children might be influenced by sophisticated reasoning

19   Related social factor such as mother-child communication to capability act in TOM

20   explained children are less likely to tell something interactive to their mother than to their friends

Questions 21-27

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage.

Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 21-27 on your answer sheet.

In 1980s, researchers are designed to test the subject called 21……………………… that if children have the ability to represent reality. First experiment was carried out on this subject on a boy. And questions had been made on where the boy can find the location of the 22……………………… But it was accused that it had excessive 23………………………. So second modified experiment was conducted involving two dolls, and most children passed the test at the age of 24……………………….. Then Lewis and Dunn researched 25……………………… children in a certain place, and found children who have more interaction such as more conversation with 26……………………… actually have better performance in the test, and peer interaction is 27………………………. Because of consisting pretending elements.