2026 수능특강 영어독해연습 4강
7 인간처럼 구문을 사용하는 일본 박새의 노래
The bird songs we hear every ____ are more than beautiful.
They serve a practical ____
Birds employ their voices to call their ____ find their flock, claim territory, scare off intruders, warn others about predators, and for countless other functions.
For instance, Japanese and Swiss researchers recently discovered that Japanese great tits, small birds with jet-black ____ and necks with prominent white cheeks, use syntax in their songs, just as humans do in their speech.
Syntax is crucial to language. For example, if you say, “I love that restaurant,” the message is ____
But not even Star Wars’ Master ____ could understand, “Restaurant love that I.” Until recently, scientists believed that only humans could string together such vocalizations.
The Japanese great tit, it turns out, is the first animal apart from humans who can use phonological syntax — the ability to combine sounds ____ individually have no meaning into a collective sound — that does.
To instruct other members of his flock to scan for predators, or to attract a mate, a great tit must sing several distinct notes in the correct order — if the notes are sung differently, the study found, ____ birds will not react.
8 불안에 대한 유전자의 역할
When an organism is confronted with some sort of threat, it typically becomes vigilant, searches to gain information about ____ nature of the threat, struggles to find an effective coping response.
And once a signal indicates safety — the lion ____ been evaded, the traffic cop buys the explanation and doesn’t issue a ticket — the organism can relax.
But this is not what ____ in an anxious individual.
Instead, there is a nervous scrambling among coping ____ — abruptly shifting from one to another without checking whether anything has worked, an agitated attempt to cover all the bases and attempt a variety of responses simultaneously.
Or there is an inability to detect when the safety signal occurs, and the restless ____ keeps going.
By definition, anxiety makes little sense outside the context of what the ____ is doing to an individual.
In that framework, the brain ____ and, ultimately, the genes relevant to anxiety don’t make you anxious.
They make you more responsive to anxiety-provoking situations, make it harder to ____ safety signals in the environment.
9 확률을 예측하는 아기
Babies use statistical learning to ____ predictions about the world, guiding their actions.
Like little statisticians, they form hypotheses, assess probabilities based on their knowledge, integrate new evidence from the environment, ____ perform tests.
In one creative study by the developmental psychologist Fei Xu, ten- to fourteen-month-old children first expressed a preference ____ pink or black lollipops, then were shown two candy jars:
one containing more black lollipops than pink, and ____ with more pink than black.
The experimenter then closed her eyes ____ drew one lollipop from each jar so infants could see only the stick, not the color.
Each lollipop was placed into a separate, opaque cup ____ only the stick showing.
Infants crawled to the cup that was statistically more likely to contain their preferred color, because it came from a jar where that color was in ____ majority.
Experiments like this demonstrate that infants are not merely ____ to the world.
Even from a very young age, they actively estimate probabilities based on patterns that they ____ and learn, to maximize the outcomes they desire.
10 냄새의 기능
David Howes, a professor of anthropology, notes the frequent association in different cultures between scents and rituals of ____ such as funerals or rites of passage.
He suggests that scent is felt to be symbolically appropriate for moments ____ social transition because it so frequently accompanies and marks other types of physical transition,
as when cooking smells signal ____ transformation of raw ingredients into food.
While scents tend to escape spaces and spread out of human control, our experience ____ them is frequently liminal, as we notice scents far more strongly when first entering their range.
You smell baking bread strongly as you enter a house, but after a few minutes inside, you may no longer be able to smell it even with deliberate effort, a ____ process known as olfactory adaptation or exhaustion.
____ takes an overwhelming smell to retain our notice after a period of constant exposure.
Smells signal transitions through space as ____ as changes of state, and are thus used to mark socially important moments of change.
11 다양한 접근 방식의 필요성
Variability in judgments is expected and welcome in a competitive situation ____ which the best judgments will be rewarded.
____ several companies (or several teams in the same organization) compete to generate innovative solutions to the same customer problem, we don’t want them to focus on the same approach.
The same is true when multiple teams of researchers attack a scientific problem, such as the development of a vaccine: we very much want them to look at it ____ different angles.
____ forecasters sometimes behave like competitive players.
The analyst who correctly calls a recession that no one else has anticipated is ____ to gain fame, whereas the one who never strays from the agreement remains unnoticed.
In such settings, variability in ideas and judgments is again welcome, because variation ____ only the first step.
In a second ____ the results of these judgments will be pitted against one another, and the best will triumph.
In a market as in nature, selection cannot work without ____
12 철저한 사전 조사
Intelligent ____ begin with preparation.
No scientist wants ____ waste time or materials on experiments that have been run before and failed.
Do your homework. The classic intelligent failure ____ hypothesis driven.
You’ve taken the ____ to think through what might happen — why you have reason to believe that you could be right about what will happen.
My Harvard colleague Thomas Eisenmann, an entrepreneurship expert, finds that ____ start-up failures are caused by the skipping of basic homework.
For example, Triangulate, an online dating start-up, rushed to launch fully functional offerings that didn’t fit any market ____
____ to launch fast, founders skipped the research — customer interviews to probe for unmet needs.
Paying no attention to that ____ preparation, the company paid the price.
Thomas attributes this common failure, in part, to “the ‘fail fast’ mantra,” ____ overemphasizes action, shortchanging preparation.
Moreover, while this might seem self-evident, once you’ve done the homework, you must pay attention to what it’s ____ you.