donchenko_angliyska_ddlya_psikhologiv_i_sotsiologiv

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-if it is possible for him to remember things by repeating them;

-if he has got a special diary to put down some important facts;

-how he remembers telephone numbers;

-in what way he makes notes of the lectures.

2.Your friend knows English very well. You would like to know it as well as he does. You ask him about his way of learning a language.

Ask your partner:

-when he started learning English;

-how he learned new words;

-what is the best way to remember things;

-if it is better to learn words or phrases;

-if different odors help memorize something;

-if attention plays any role in the process of memorizing.

3.Your friend has written an essay on the problem of memory. You have been greatly interested in the phenomenon of memorizing things for a long time. You would like to understand this complicated mechanism.

Ask your friend:

-what kinds of memory exist;

-if short-term memory keeps information long;

-what we should do to move information into the longterm store;

-what system is less permanent: STM or LTM;

-if deep processing of information is the only way to remember something;

-what the human mind reminds of.

4.You are an absent-minded person by your nature. You constantly forget your mother's request to buy something. And your mother says you are always in the clouds. You

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come to a psychoanalyst for advice.

Ask him:

-if your situation is hopeless;

-if your bad memory is associated with mental disorders;

-what it is necessary to do to correct the situation;

-if you must make some special notes lest you should forget what they mean;

if there are many people with the same syndrome of absentmindedness;

-what training exercises he can suggest.

VIII. Read the article and answer the questions:

1.What is «relative pitch» called?

2.What experiment was made by the US researchers?

3.What was the really interesting finding?

4.What have psychiatrists found out?

Music and Memory

Some people are able to listen to isolated musical notes and identify them correctly. This rare musical gift is known as «perfect pitch» or «absolute pitch». It is not something that can be learned. Either you have the ability or you haven't. But most people, given the necessary musical training, can acquire what is known as «relative pitch». This is the ability to compare two notes accurately, to name a note by reference to one which has already been played and named.

The interesting thing about the difference between these two abilities is that they make use of different brain functions. According to existing evidence, relative pitch is a feature of a highly-trained memory. But people with perfect pitch don't seem to be using memory at all. Instead they seem to have some set of internal «standards» that allows

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them to name a note without comparing it to anything previously heard.

Researchers at the University of Illinois in the USA used this difference to try and identify the parts of the brain used in updating short-term memory. They compared the brain waves of two groups of musicians as they tried to identify a series of computer-generated musical notes. One group had perfect pitch, the other used relative pitch.

Each person's brain waves were measured by electrodes placed near the front of the head. The really interesting finding was that what are known as «P300» waves were produced in abundance by the group of musicians without perfect pitch, but scarcely at all by those with perfect pitch. The «P300» wave, then, seems to be an indicator of how much use the brain is making of short-term memory. Scientists had suspected this, but if the only difference between the mental activities of the two groups was whether they were using short-term memory or not, the research appears to confirm it.

Psychiatrists now know more about which parts of the brain are associated with short-term memory, but the musical gift of perfect pitch is as much of a mystery as ever.

(by John Wilson, from «BBC English»)

IX. Give the general idea of the article in seven sentences.

X.Translate the text in writing:

Memory's Mind Games

(by Sharon Begley)

When it comes to memory problems, forgetting is only the

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tip of the iceberg, The failings of memory run much deeper than an ability to recall your neighbor's name or the location of your keys. Much recent memory research has focused on why we forget, shedding light on tragedies like Alzheimer's as well as puzzles like why we often know the first letter of a word we're trying to remember but not the rest of it. But unlike absent-mindedness and other «sins of omission», memory's «sins of commission» shape - and often distort - our

view of reality and relationships. Some of the sins:

Blocking. Somewhere between remembering and forgetting lies blocking. You know that the word for an oration at a funeral begins with a vowel, but it just won't spring into consciousness. Proper names are blocked more often than any other words, memory researchers find, and more in old people than young. The sound of a word is encoded in the brain in a different place from its meaning. If the links from concept to visual representation to the word itself are weak, then we can't get to the word even though we may remember everything about it. You may tickle neurons here, but the reverberations never reach those deeper in the circuit.

Sometimes we get to the first sound in the word but no further: the phonemes of words are apparently encoded separately, too. Words we use infrequently are especially subject to this tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

Misattribution. In misattribution, people unconsciously transfer a memory from one mental category to another — from imagination to reality, from this time and place to that one, from hearsay to personal experience. The brain has made what psychologists call a «binding error», incorrectly linking the content of a memory with its context. The fault may lie in the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped structure deep in the brain's temporal lobe, whose job includes binding together all facets of a memory. When the hippocampus is damaged, patients are more prone to binding errors.

Suggestibility. In this memory error, people confuse personal recollection with outside sources of information.

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Suggestibility is therefore a form of misattribution, but an especially pernicious one. Leading questions or even encouraging feedback may result in 'memories' of events that never happened.

Suggestibility can lead to false eyewitness identities, because even seemingly innocuous feedback can distort recall. In one study, psychologist Gary Wells of Iowa State University showed volunteers a security video of a man entering a Target store. Moments later, Wells told them, the man murdered a guard. He then showed them photos and asked them to identify the gunman (who actually appeared in none of the snapshots). Good, you identified the actual suspect, the scientists told some of the volunteers. Those who received this encouragement later told Wells they were more confident in their recall and had had a better view of the man on the video than those who were not praised for their 'correct' ID. Certainty and your assurance that you got a good look at the suspect are the kinds of details a jury uses when weighing eyewitness testimony. Positive feedback seems to cement memory and even erase any original uncertainty.

Persistence. Memories that refuse to fade tend to involve regret, trauma and other potent negative emotions. All emotions strengthen a memory, but negative ones seem to write on the brain an indelible link. That's especially true if the memory reinforces your self-image: if you think of yourself as a screw-up, you'll have a hard time erasing the memory of the time you spilled wine on your boss.

Bias. It is a cliché that couples in love recall their courtship as a time of bliss, while unhappy pairs recall that «I never really loved him (or her).» But the cliché is true. We rewrite our memories of the past to fit our present views and needs. That may be an outgrown of forgetting: we can't recall how we felt in the past, so we assume it must be how we feel today. But often bias arises when more powerful mental systems bully poor little memory. The left brain, driven to keep thoughts of yesterday and today from conflicting, reconciles past and present.

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Stereotyping can also bias memory. When memory conflicts with what you're convinced is true, it often comes out of the losing end. And that can make forgetting where you put your keys seem trivial indeed.

(«NEWSWEEK» 2002)

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UNIT IV

I.Read and translate the text:

Is There a Secret of Long Life?

Mankind has been seeking to unravel the mystery of long life for more than millennium, with hundreds of hypotheses and theories being suggested. It has become evident that long life comes from a whole set of factors, such as purely genetic, but also biological factors and, of course, successful social adaptation. Whereas until quite recently long life in the scientific community was the subject of close attention for gerontologists alone, in recent years, biologists, ethnographers, ecologists, psychologists and sociologists have also joined in with the research.

The distinctive feature of their approach is that rather than examining individual centenarians, the scientists today study entire populations, i.e., large groups, among whom many people have lived long lives, and what is most essential, long lives in these groups have become a regular occurrence in the course of history.

Scientists compare «long-living» groups with control populations with shorter lives in the vicinity.

Today’s centenarians are people who were as a rule born and lived in one place, without going anywhere, without changing either habits, occupations or diets. Moreover, it has been discovered that the studies played down the role of the psychological factor. We call it «a psychic health factor». It deserves special attention and can prove to be one of the main reasons for longevity as a regular occurrence. What is it?

In the first place, this is what we describe as the gerontophile atmosphere, a socio-psychological milieu of marked respect for the old people. This undoubtedly has a

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favourable effect on the tonus and optimistic mood among the elderly and maintains their interest in life and longevity as a whole.

Secondly, and this is even more important, there are antistress attitudes incorporated in society. These are mutual relations which are designed to relieve stress both among individuals and whole groups. The strong family and kinship have a strong positive effect, especially in dramatic situations following death or illness. In other words, we must live without stresses.

So anti-stress behaviour is perhaps the most important thing. With time this will enable the geneticists to extend the natural life span. However, we should not really pin our hopes on this. A comprehensive study of longevity can help scientists not so much to increase the time that any human being spends here on Earth, as to prolong his active life which is worth living as much as possible.

II. Answer the following questions:

1.What factors influence our life?

2.What scientists are interested in the problem of long life?

3.How do they organize their research?

4.What people comprise today's centenarians?

5.What factor plays a leading role in longevity?

6.What is this factor called?

7.What is meant by the gerontophile atmosphere?

8.What attitude should be incorporated in society?

9.What is the aim of geneticists

III. Find the facts in the text to prove that:

1.A great number of scientists are engaged in the research of long life.

2.The gerontophile atmosphere is necessary for people to live longer.

3.Anti-stress behaviour is the most important thing.

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IV.Agree or disagree with the following statements. Give your arguments.

1.It is quite possible to live a long life.

2.Only genetic factor plays a main part in the life span.

3.In stressful situations we become strong and healthy.

4.It is necessary to create a socio-psychological milieu of mutual respect.

V. Make up a list of problems raised in the text. Which one do you think to be of primary importance? Why?

VI. Make up a plan of the text.

VII. Speak on the text.

VII.Read the text and give its general idea in Russian:

Possible Human Life Expectancy

The biologists have arrived at the conclusion that maximum human life expectancy constitutes 170-200 years, provided a person doesn't die of illness. Men and women have equal chances.

To determine a person's possible life-span it is necessary to possess practical data on their life history in the period between two and 30 years of age. The more comprehensive the data are, the more accurately a computer will estimate the possible life-span.

The hypothesis is based on that when a person ages, the water content in cells, the kidneys’ filtrating ability and the vital capacity of the lungs - all become reduced. And on the whole the weight of both men and women reduces.

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It has been proved that in the process of development, growth and ageing of everything living, the change in the mass serves, as it were, the sum total of all the changes.

The gerontologists are unanimous that a person very rarely dies due to the total loss of life force. Usually death results from the increase in pathological changes due to different diseases. Taking this into account, the doctors will be able to determine more accurately the methods of treating their patients, and prescribe medicines which would be most effective for the given person.

Notes:

life expectancy — продолжительность жизни comprehensive - исчерпывающий

cell - клетка kidneys – почки

IX. Make up 6 questions to the text and ask your friend to answer them.

X. Explain:

a) how it is possible to determine a person's life-span; b)what changes take place in the human organism

throughout life;

c) what gerontologists deal with.

XI. Discuss in the group:

a)maximum human life expectancy;

b)the biologists' hypothesis;

c)the doctors’ task to prolong patients’ life.

XII. Read the text and be ready to answer the questions:

1.What problem does the text deal with?

2.What do the latest statistical data show?

3.What information about migration does the article contain?

4.What place does Russia occupy in population?