法政大學で2013年に出題された問題です。月曜日と金曜日に、パラグラフ毎に解説して參ります。
つぎの英文を読み、問いに答えよ。
If East Asians must coordinate their behavior with others and adjust to situations, we would expect them to (1) attend more closely to other people’s attitudes and behaviors than do Westerners. In fact we have evidence that East Asians do pay more attention to the social world than do Westerners. We found evidence that Beijing University students have more knowledge about the attitudes and behaviors of their peers than do University of Michigan students. A research team from our labs at Michigan headed by Trey Hedden and Denise Park, and by Qicheng Jing at the Chinese Institute of Psychology, examined how memory for words would be affected by the type of pictorial background (2) they appeared on. Chinese and American college students and elderly people were asked to look at a large number of words. Some words were presented on a “social” background consisting of pictures of people, some on a background consisting of “nonsocial” objects such as flowers, and some on no background at all. After seeing the set of pictures, participants reported all the words they could recall. There was no difference between Chinese and Americans in recall of words initially presented on nonsocial backgrounds or on no background, but Chinese participants recalled more words that had been presented on social backgrounds than did American participants. Memory for the pictures of people apparently served as (3) a retrieval cue for the words printed on them, indicating that the Chinese had paid more attention to the social cues than the Americans.
There is good reason to believe that Westerners and Asians actually experience the world in very different ways. Westerners are the (4) protagonists of their autobiographical novels, while Asians are merely supporting members in movies depicting their lives. A group of developmental psychologists asked four- and six-year-old American and Chinese children to report on daily events, such as the things they did at bedtime the night before or how they spent their last birthday. They found three remarkable things. First, although all children made more references to themselves than to others, the proportion of self-references was [ (5) ] for American children than for Chinese children. Second, the Chinese children provided many small details about events and described them in a brief, matter-of-fact fashion. American children talked in a more leisurely way about far fewer events. Third, American children made twice as many references to their own internal states, such as [ (6) ], as did the Chinese children. In short, for American kids: “Well, enough about you; let’s talk about me.”
That Asians have a broader view of events, taking into perspective the orientation of other people, is also indicated by a study by social psychologists Dov Cohen and Alex Gunz. They asked North American students (mostly Canadian) and Asian students (a variety of students fromHong Kong,China,Taiwan,Korea, and various South and Southeast Asian countries) to recall specific instances of ten different situations in which they were the center of attention: for example, “being embarrassed.” North Americans were more likely than Asians to reproduce the scene from their original point of view, looking outward. Asians were more likely to imagine the scene as an observer might, describing it from a third-person perspective. [536 words]
1.下線部 (1) attend more closely to で用いられている attend to の意味に最も近い語（句）を、つぎの a～d の中から一つ選べ。
a. imitate b. observe c. participate in d. remember
2. 下線部 (2) they の内容を表すものを、つぎの a～d の中から一つ選べ。
a. behaviors b. peers c. pictures d. words
3. 下線部 (3) a retrieval cue の内容を表すものとして最も適切なものを、つぎの a～d の中から一つ選べ。
a. a clue to react b. a clue to recall c. a clue to repeat d. a clue to replace
4. 下線部 (4) protagonists の内容を表すものとして最も適切なものを、つぎの a～d の中から一つ選べ。
a. directors and producers b. heroes and heroines c. minor characters d. narrators
5. 空所 [ (5) ] につぎの a～e の単語を並べ替えて入れ、意味の通るようにせよ。その際に、2 番目と 4 番目にくる語の記号をそれぞれ書け。
a. higher b. three c. than d. times e. more
6. 空所 [ (6) ] に入る最も適切なものを、つぎの a～d の中から一つ選べ。
a. events and schedules b. spaces and times c. preferences and emotions d. houses and schools
7. 本文の内容と合致するものをつぎの a～e の中から二つ選べ。
a. The author took part in research looking into the relationship between memory and association.
b. The author and his peers proved that college students from East Asian countries are superior in short-term memory to American students.
c. North Americans tend to be strict about factual description in story-telling of the events important to them.
d. Asians tend to have a more comprehensive view of their human environment than Westerners.
e. How a person perceives the world is affected by both intelligence and personality.
