The Daily Dose

Cambridge 12 | Test 7 | Passage 3 Music and the Emotions Why does music make us feel? On the one hand, music is a purely abstract art form devoid of language or explicit ideas. And yet, even though music says little, it still manages to touch us deeply. When listening to our favorite songs, our body betrays all the symptoms of emotional arousal. The pupils in our eyes dilate, our pulse and blood p...

Cambridge 12 | Test 6 | Passage 3 The Benefits of Being Bilingual Research indicates that bilingual experience may help to keep the cognitive mechanisms sharp by recruiting alternate brain networks to compensate for those that become damaged during aging. Older bilinguals enjoy improved memory relative to monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits. In a study of over 200 pati...

Cambridge 12 | Test 5 | Passage 2 Collecting as a Hobby There are people who collect because they want to make money—this could be called an instrumental reason for collecting; that is, collecting as a means to an end . They’ll look for, say, antiques that they can buy cheaply and expect to be able to sell at a profit . But there may well be a psychological element, too—buying cheap and selling de...

Cambridge 10 | Test 4 | Passage 2 Film Sound Film sound comprises conventions and innovations. We have come to expect an acceleration of music during car chases and creaky doors in horror films. Yet, it is important to note as well that sound is often brilliantly conceived. The effects of sound are often largely subtle and often are noted by only our subconscious minds. We need to foster an awaren...

Cambridge 10 | Test 2 | Passage 3 Museums of Fine Art If Mona Lisa was a famous novel, few people would bother to go to a museum to read the writer’s actual manuscript rather than a printed reproduction. This might be explained by the fact that the novel has evolved precisely because of technological developments that made it possible to print out huge numbers of texts, whereas oil paintings have...

Cambridge 6 | Test 3 | Passage 3 The Anti-aging Pill To delay aging, people would have to reduce their caloric intake by roughly thirty per cent. Few mortals could stick to that harsh regimen , especially for years on end. But what if someone could create a pill that mimicked the physiological effects of eating less without actually forcing people to eat less? Could such a “caloric-restriction mim...

Cambridge 7 | Test 2 | Passage 2 The True Cost of Food For more than forty years the cost of food has been rising. It has now reached a point where a growing number of people believe that it is far too high, and that bringing it down will be one of the great challenges of the twenty first century. That cost, however, is not in immediate cash. In the West at least, most food is now far cheaper to b...

Cambridge 8 | Test 3 | Passage 2 The Nature of Genius To think of geniuses and the gifted as having uniquely different brains is only reasonable if we accept that each human brain is uniquely different. The purpose of instruction is to make us even more different from one another, and in the process of being educated we can learn from the achievements of those more gifted than ourselves. But befor...

Cambridge 8 | Test 2 | Passage 3 The meaning and power of smell Odors are essential cues in social bonding . One respondent to a survey believed that there is no true emotional bonding without touching and smelling a loved one. In fact, infants recognize the odors of their mothers soon after birth and adults can often identify their children and spouses by scent . In one well-known test, women and...

Cambridge 9 | Test 2 | Passage 3 A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently The best way to see things differently to other people is to bombard the brain with things it has never encountered before. Novelty releases the perceptual process from the chains of past experience and forces the brain to make new judgments. Successful iconoclasts have an extraordinary willingness to be exposed to...

Cambridge 9 | Test 1 | Passage 2 Is there anybody out there? The question of whether we are alone in the Universe has haunted humanity for centuries , but we may now stand poised on the brink of the answer to that question, as we search for radio signals from other intelligent civilizations. This search, often known by the acronym SETI (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence), is a difficult on...

Cambridge 10 – Test 1 – Passage 3 The Psychology of Innovation One reason that companies don’t succeed as often as they should is that innovation starts with recruitment . Research shows that the fit between an employee’s values and a company’s values makes a difference to what contribution they make and whether, two years after they join, they’re still at the company. Studies at Harvard Business...