[2015年辽宁省重点中学协作体三模]

  While every dog owner knows their dogs can read their moods perfectly scien?tists have always been a little doubtful. Now thanks to some researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna Austria we finally have some convincing evidence.

  For their study biologist Corson Mill?er and his team exposed eleven selected dogs to digital images of women that were either angry or happy. Half the dogs were rewar?ded for touching the screen when showing a happy face while the other half given their treat for selec?ting those that appeared angry.

  Interestingly the dogs were not provided with the entire face. Some dogs were shown only upper halves while the others observed lower halves. That's because the sci?entists believe humans show their eruptions on their entire face.

  After some training on how to recognize small differ?ences like the wrinkles between the eyes or the changes in their shape that accompany the happy or angry expres?sions* the dogs were mostly able to identify the correct expression not only on a familiar face but on a strange face. The researchers concluded the dogs were smart enough to read human emotions.

  They also found those being trained to read angry ex?pressions took a longer time to learn. They guess it may be because dogs find angry faces disgusting causing them to withdraw quickly. However once the smart dogs realized they were getting the reward the trepidation seemed to disappear. In fact the dogs had such a good time playing the computer "game" that scientists had a hard time keep?ing them away from the touch screens after the study was completed.

  The researchers also noticed only dogs with a male owner had a harder time understanding the expressions correctly. Since the touching screen models were all fe?males this confirmed what had been observed in previous studies―dogs are more efficient at reading facial expres?sions of people that are the same gender as their owner.

18. How did the scientists conduct the experiment?

   A. By leaving dogs to women who are either happy or angry.

   B. By mixing the selected dogs together.

   C. By rewarding only half of the dogs touching the screen.

   D. By showing digital pictures of women's happy or angry faces.

19. Which of the following statements is TRUE?

   A. The dogs were all provided with the entire face.

   B. According to their size the dogs were given either upper or lower halves.

   C. The dogs could read even small changes that ac?company facial expressions after some training.

   D. The dogs couldn't read strangers' facial emotions.

20. The underlined word " trepidation”in Paragraph 5 probably means "        ".

   A. horror   B. curiosity

   C. excitement   D. doubt

21. How might the results change if the dogs with female owners are shown pictures of male faces?

   A. They could only tell emotions on partial faces rather than on entire faces.

   B. They found it hard to tell the moods on the faces of a different gender.

   C. They found it easy to tell the emotions on the en?tire face.

   D. They would be scared away at the sight of the pic?tures.