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Passive - Reading Ex

Pigeons have been shown to recognize human facial expressions of emotions like happiness, anger, surprise and disgust. In experiments at the University of Iowa, trained pigeons could distinguish between photographs of people displaying different emotions, and could identify the same expressions in unfamiliar faces. This challenges the idea that only humans have evolved the ability to recognize subtle facial expressions. The findings also suggest that the capacity for facial recognition may be learned rather than innate in humans. Previous experiments at the University of Iowa found that pigeons can organize images into logical categories similar to humans. Charles Darwin would not have been surprised by these results, as his theory of evolution proposed continuity of mental abilities between animals and humans.

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83 views2 pages

Passive - Reading Ex

Pigeons have been shown to recognize human facial expressions of emotions like happiness, anger, surprise and disgust. In experiments at the University of Iowa, trained pigeons could distinguish between photographs of people displaying different emotions, and could identify the same expressions in unfamiliar faces. This challenges the idea that only humans have evolved the ability to recognize subtle facial expressions. The findings also suggest that the capacity for facial recognition may be learned rather than innate in humans. Previous experiments at the University of Iowa found that pigeons can organize images into logical categories similar to humans. Charles Darwin would not have been surprised by these results, as his theory of evolution proposed continuity of mental abilities between animals and humans.

Uploaded by

Alessandro Mazzucchelli
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1

Before reading translate the following sentences:

1. Si è insegnato ai piccioni a riconoscere le espressioni facciali dell’uomo.


2. In recenti esperimenti presso l’Università di Iowa si sono mostrate ad otto piccioni allenati delle
fotografie di persone che manifestavano emozioni di felicità, rabbia, sorpresa e disgusto.
3. La capacità di riconoscere le espressioni emotive non è necessariamente innata nei neonati, ma si
dovrebbe riuscire ad impararla allo stesso modo in cui la imparano i piccioni.
4. In esperimenti condotti molti anni fa presso l’Università di Iowa, si è scoperto che i piccioni
organizzano immagini delle cose secondo molte delle categorie logiche usate dagli uomini.
5. Se Darwin avesse potuto vedere i risultati di questo esperimento, quale avrebbe potuto essere la sua
più probabile reazione?

Read carefully

Pigeons have been taught to recognize human facial expressions, upsetting long-held beliefs that only
humans have evolved the sophisticated nervous systems needed to perform such a feat. In recent experiments
at the University of Iowa, eight trained pigeons were shown photographs of people displaying emotions of
happiness, anger, surprise and disgust. The birds learned to distinguish between these expressions. Not only
that, but they were able to correctly identify the same expressions on photographs of unfamiliar faces. Their
achievement does not suggest, of course, that the pigeons had any idea what the human expressions meant.

Some psychologists had theorized that, because facial expression is vital to human communication, humans
have evolved special nervous systems capable of recognizing subtle differences between expressions. Now
the pigeons have cast doubt on that idea.

In fact, the ability to recognize facial expressions of emotion is not necessarily innate even in human babies,
but may have to be learned in much the same way that pigeons learn. In experiments conducted several years
ago at the University of Iowa, it was found that pigeons organize images of things into many of the same
logical categories that human do.

None of these results would come as any surprise to Charles Darwin, who long ago wrote about the
continuity of mental development from animals to humans.

Answer inference questions based on the passage.

1. From the information in paragraph 1, it can be inferred that pigeons:


o show more emotions that people thought they could
o can understand the human emotions of happiness, anger, surprise and disgust
o can identify only the expressions of people that they are familiar with
o have more sophisticated nervous systems that was once thought
2. The author probably believes that the psychologists mentioned in paragraph 2:
o will need to revise their theory
o no longer believe that expressions are important in human communication
o have conducted their own experiments with pigeons
2

o no longer think that the pigeons have cast doubt on their theories
3. In paragraph 3, the author suggests that, at birth, human babies:
o have nervous systems capable of recognizing subtle expressions
o can learn from pigeons
o are not able to recognize familiar faces
o may not be able to identify basic emotions through facial expressions
4. What can be inferred about the experiments that were conducted several years ago at the University
of Iowa?
o they were completely contradicted by more recent experiments
o they supported the idea that pigeons and humans share certain mental abilities
o they were conducted by scientists on human babies
o they proved that animals other than pigeons could recognize human expressions
5. If Charles Darwin could have seen the results of this experiments, his most probable reaction would
have been one of
o rejection
o surprise
o agreement
o amusement

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