In the past fifty years, American society has changed a great deal. Fifty years ago, most Americans lived in small communities. They rarely moved from one area to another and knew their neighbors at least by name if not by close, personal relations. Life was so personal in those days that people often joked about it.They said that a person could not even stay home from church on Sunday without the whole town knowing about it. It was difficult to keep one’s secret in a small community like that, but there was usually a sense of safety, of belonging, and of community togetherness in such places. Except for church and the local movie theater, there was not much entertainment. Some people dreamed about moving to the exciting life of the big cities, but most people were happy to live all their lives in the same community.
Few people experience this type of lifelong relationship or sense of community togetherness now. The American society is much more unsettled now
A. Because American people do not like to talk to each other.
B. Because the society does not have small communities now.
C. Because not many people say "hello" to each other when they meet.
D. Because people no longer maintain close relations with each other.
Passage Four
For some time past it has been widely accepted that babies and other creatures learn to do things because certain acts lead to "rewards"; and there is no reason to doubt that this is true. But it used also to be widely believed that effective rewards, at least in the early stages, had to be directly related to such basic physiological "drives" as thirst or hunger. In other words, a baby would learn if he got food or drink or some sort of physical comfort, not otherwise.
It is now clear that this is not so. Babies will learn to behave in ways that produce results in the world with no reward except the successful outcome.
Papousek began his studies by using milk in the normal way to "reward" the babies and so teach them to carry out some simple movements, such as turning the head to one side or the other. Then he noticed that a baby who had had enough to drink would refuse the milk but would still go on makin
A. the lights were directly related to some basic "drives"
B. the sight of the lights was interesting
C. they need not turn back to watch the lights
D. they succeeded in "switching on" the lights
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