Chimps(黑猩猩) will cooperate in certain ways, like gathering in war parties to protect their territory. But beyond the minimum requirements as social beings, they have little instinct (本能) to help one another. Chimps in the wild seek food for themselves. Even chimp mothers regularly decline to share food with their children, who are able from a young age to gather their own food.

In the laboratory, chimps don't naturally share food either. If a chimp is put in a cage where he can pull in one plate of food for himself or, with no great effort, a plate that also provides food for a neighbor to the next cage, he will pull at random —he just doesn't care whether his neighbor gets fed or not. Chimps are truly selfish.

Human children, on the other hand are naturally corporative. From the earliest ages, they decide to help others, to share information and to participate in achieving common goals. The psychologist Michael Tomasello has studied this cooperativeness in a series of experiment with very young children. He finds that if babies aged 18 months see an unrelated adult with hands full trying to open a door, almost all will immediately try to help.

There are several reasons to believe that the urges to help, inform and share are not taught, but naturally possessed in young children. One is that these instincts appear at a very young age before most parents have started to train their children to behave socially. Another is that the helping behaviors are not improved if the children are rewarded. A third reason is that social intelligence develops in children before their general cognitive（认知的）skills, at least when compared with chimps. In tests conducted by Tomasello, the human children did no better than the chimps on the physical world tests but were considerably better at understanding the social world.

The core of what children's minds have and chimps' don't is what Tomasello calls shared intentionality. Part of this ability is that they can infer what others know or are thinking. But beyond that, even very young children want to be part of a shared purpose. They actively seek to be part of a “we”, a group that intends to work toward a shared goal.

Current Culture: Is Common Culture Alive?

    The digitizing and globalizing world is changing the working of culture. As some see it, cities and nations are losing their common culture and their general spirit: people can no longer count on those around them valuing any of the same music or films. Others argue that a common culture is not dying so much as changing forms: it is less and less attached to a particular area and ever more linked to global networks.

    The facts lead to the change that anyone can become a cultural producer today, that the culture is increasingly available everywhere you want it, and whenever you want it, not just in the two months after the movie or book came out. Cultural possibilities have multiplied as a result, but the change also means fewer cultural moments. It is easy to find the change in terms of loss of diversity of society. So what will it mean if globalization turns us into one wide world culture?

    For the enthusiasts of these changes, culture is not about popular artists or books, but centers on platforms like Google and Wikipedia, where every variety of culture brings about the exchange of knowledge and ideas, and makes connections across boundaries. It is perhaps debatable whether two people who have participated in such websites, but in totally different corners of them, have had a cultural experience in common. In fact, these platforms become very successful with a large crowd of people, who build things together, share information, and forward articles back and forth. Here are still more questions. What does it mean for the future of countries that culture now goes beyond the limits of the nation? Is there anything to defend and preserve in the passing cultural world, or is that merely to favor pen over printing press, horse over automobile?

    Up to now a growing quantity of culture has been globally spreading and developing. More individuals (个人) than ever have the chances to be makers of culture, even if that means more to choose from and fewer standards to be reached in common. What it means is this strange feeling: that of being more connected than ever, with one-click access to so much of the cultural harvest around the world, and yet, of being starved for having similar interests and opinions with others, concerned only with ourselves.

阅读短文，从每题所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中，选出最佳选项。

    Sherlock: The Abominable Bride.

    Release date: January 1, 2016

    Price: $8

    Plot: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson travel back to the Victorian era to solve the case of “The Abominable Bride”

    The Revenant

    Release date: January 8, 2016

    Price: $6

    Plot: In the 1820s,a frontiersman，Hugh Glass，sets out on a path of vengeance against those who left him for dead after a bear mauling.

    The Fifth Wave:

    Release date: January 15,2016

    Price: $6.5

    Plot：Four waves of increasingly deadly attacks have left most of Earth decimated. Against a backdrop of fear and distrust, Cassie is on the run, desperately trying to save her younger brother. As she prepares for the fifth wave, Cassie teams up with a young man who may become her final hope-if she can only trust him.

    Kung Fu Panda 3

    Release date: January 29, 2016

    Price:Adult$7.5   Child（aged six &up）$3.5

    Plot：Po reunites with his biological father and travels with him to a secret sanctuary of pandas where, to his surprise, he does not fit in. There he meets Mei Mei, an overly eager panda, who had been promised to Po through an arranged marriage when they were children. To make matters worse, an evil ancient spirit called Kai begins terrorizing China and stealing the powers of defeated kung fu masters. Now, in the face of incredible odds, Po must learn to train a village of clumsy, fun-loving pandas to become a band of Kung Fu Pandas.

    If you want to convince the boss you deserve a pay rise or promotion, the solution could be simple — eat the same food as they do. Psychologists have discovered managers are much more likely to instantly trust us if we choose the same dishes as them.

    During experiments, discussions over wages and work conditions were much more successful if both sides chose to snack on the same treats. And shoppers were much more likely to buy a product advertised on TV by someone eating a similar food to them at the time.

    The reason is thought to be so-called similarity attraction theory — where people tend to like others who have similar tastes or habits to themselves. But this is believed to be one of the first studies highlighting the role of food in this relationship. Researchers at Chicago University in the US conducted a series of experiments to examine food's role in earning trust.

    In a test, participants were told to watch TV — where someone pretending to be a member of the public praised a certain product. The volunteers were given Kit Kat bars to nibble (咬), while the TV people ate either a Kit Kat or grapes as they talked.

    The results showed viewers were much more likely to express an interest in buying the product if the TV showed the other person eating a Kit Kat too.

    The researchers added, “Although similarity in food consumption is not a sign of whether two people will get along, we find consumers treat this as such. They feel more trusting of those who consume as they do. It means people can immediately begin to feel friendship and develop a bond, leading to smoother transactions (交易) from the start.”

    Harley Street psychologist Dr. Lucy Atcheson said it was already known that wearing similar clothes could instantly create trust. But this was the first report that food had the same effect. She said, “This is really interesting. It makes sense as people feel they have common ground and can trust the other person. That means negotiations are more likely to be successful.”

    Some people have the feeling that nothing can be done about their poor reading ability(能力）. They feel hopeless about it. Can you learn to read better or must you agree that nothing can be done about it?

    To be sure, people are different. You cannot to do everything as well as certain other people do. All the students in a class tried out for basketball, some would be very good players; others would be very poor; and many would be in between. But even the very poor players can become much better players if they are guided in the right way, and with plenty of practice. It is the same with reading. Some seem to enjoy reading and to read well without any special help. Others find reading a slow and tiring job. In between, there are all degrees of reading ability.

    Many experiments have shown that just about every poor reader can improve his reading ability. In these experiments, the poor readers were given tests of reading ability. After some of the causes of their poor reading were discovered, they were given special instruction and practice in reading. After a few months, another test of the same kind was given. In nearly all cases, these people had raised their reading scores.