2025 年 12 月大学英语四级考试真题（第 2 套）

Some music inspires you to move your feet, some inspires you to get out there and change the world. In any case, it's ___26___ to say that music moves people in special ways.

If you're especially into a piece of music, your brain does something called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), which ___27___ to you like a sting in your brain.

It turns out that ASMR is pretty special. According to a ___28___ published study in The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease, the part of your brain responsible for ASMR doesn't get lost to Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's ___29___ to put people into layers of confusion, and the study confirms that music can sometimes ___30___ lift people out of the Alzheimer's haze and bring them back to (at least a likeness of) normality... if only for a short while. ASMR is powerful stuff!

This phenomenon has been ___31___ several times but rarely studied properly. One of the most famous examples of this is the story of 92-year-old Henry Dryer, who comes out of dementia while listening to songs from his youth.

Jeff Anderson, associate professor in Radiology at the University of Utah and ___32___ author on the study, says "In our society, the diagnoses of dementia are ___33___ resources to the maximum. No one says playing music will be a cure for Alzheimer's disease, but it might make the symptoms more ___34___ , decrease the cost of care and improve a patient's ___35___ of life."

Junk food is now a staple of many Americans' diets. Advertising campaigns from the snack food companies, often featuring sports stars, send the message that we can neutralize any negative effects of consuming their products simply by getting more physical exercise. But recent studies show a lack of exercise is not to blame for rising obesity rates. Bad diets are.

Interventions (干预) to help reduce junk food consumption are especially important for children and teenagers. Prevention is better than cure because obesity is so difficult to treat. Unfortunately, while health education has shown some success among young children, teens have been harder to reach.

Now a large-scale study has tried an innovative approach to change teenagers' attitudes towards healthy eating, and the results are promising. The researchers argued that previous interventions have probably been unsuccessful because of a major flaw: they focused on a future, healthier you and assumed that this would be enough motivation for teenagers. In contrast, the new intervention cleverly exploits teenagers' instinct for rebelliousness and autonomy, and the value they place on social justice.

To do this, researchers had students read an article on the food industry. It revealed a secret about the manipulative and deceptive strategies used to make junk food more addictive and characterize the products as healthy. The article also explained how advertising campaigns specifically target very young and poor people, causing harm for these vulnerable groups. Afterwards, the participants read a fictional survey of teens who wanted to 'fight back against the companies by buying and eating less processed food'.

After the intervention, participants associated healthy eating with autonomy and social justice. The teenagers also rated healthy eating as being more appealing. Importantly, there were also some promising effects of the new intervention on actual behavior. A day later the students were offered a choice of snacks and drinks in a seemingly unrelated context. The teens chose healthy snacks and drinks (such as fruit or water) more often over unhealthy options (like biscuits and soda). Apparently associating a healthy diet with teenagers' own values seems to be a promising avenue to prevent obesity.

Adults dream during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and infants have loads of REM. So, it might be fair to assume that babies have tons of dreams.

But scientists believe REM serves a completely different purpose for newborns and infants than dreaming. When babies are in REM, it allows their brain to develop pathways, connections, and eventually, learn languages.

Since your baby doesn't dream at this stage of brain development, it's safe to assume babies do not have nightmares, either. Nightmares stem from exposure to trauma (创伤), an overactive imagination, and the normal stresses of everyday life.

Are you wondering, what do babies dream about? Good question, but the answer is nothing!

So, when do babies start dreaming? The general consensus is that they start dreaming around the age of two. Psychologist David Foulkes studies children (from very small kids to teens) to bring the secrets of their dreams to the light of day. In his lab, he lets kids fall asleep and then wakes them 3 times a night and asks them to describe what they recall.

Foulkes' findings are unsurprising. Basically, little kids have little dreams. But exactly what kids see while dreaming depends on their age. As children develop and grow, their dreams do too.

Dreams of very small kids are usually just snapshots (快照), looking much more like a slideshow than a movie, when compared to the dreams of adults. They heavily feature animals and other familiar sights, like images of people eating. According to Foulkes, 'Children's dream life...seems to be similar to their waking imagination and narration.' Kids ages 5 — 9 begin seeing moving images and characters in action. Dreams now include multiple events strung together, one after the other. They also start developing greater ability to remember dreams. Still, that's not always the case: When roused during REM sleep, 25% of the kids in Foulkes' studies had no recollection of dreaming, a trend that continues through age 9.

So, if your baby seems to be in a stressful state while sleeping or is upset upon waking, there may be other factors at play.