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2013年6月英语六级考试备考深度阅读试题模拟与解析(5) One of the most eminent of psychologists, Clark Hull, claimed that the essence of reasoning lies in the putting together of two behavior segments in some novel way, never actually performed before, so as to reach a goal. Two followers of Clark Hull, Howard and Tracey Kendler, devised a test for children that was explicitly based on Hullls principles. The children were given the task of learning to operate a machine so as to get a toy. In order to succeed they had to go through a two-stage sequence. The children were trained on each stage separately. The stages consisted merely of pressing the correct one of two buttons to get a marble; and of inserting the marble into a small hole to release the toy. The Kendlers found that the children could learn the separate bits readily enough. But they did not for the most part integrate. They did not press the button to get the marble and then proceed without further help to use the marble to get the toy. So the Kendlers concluded that they were incapable of deductive reasoning. The mystery at first appears to deepen when we learn, from anther psychologist, Michael Cole and his colleagues, that adults in an African culture apparently cannot do the Kendlers task either. But it lessens, on the other hand, when we learn that a task was devised which was strictly analogous to the Kendlers one but much easier for me African males to handle. Instead of the button-pressing machine, Cole used a locked box and two differently colored match-boxes, one of which contained a key that would open the box. Notice that there are still two behavior segments--open the right match-box to get the key and use the key to open the box---so the task seems formally to be the same. But psychologically it is quite different. Now the subject is dealing not with a strange machine but with familiar meaningful objects: and it is clear to him what he is meant to do. It then turns our that the difficulty of integration is greatly reduced. | 
