学进去

Time flies when we play with our smart phone. But when we get down to the real business of work and study, one hour feels like a year. Why are we so addicted(入迷的) to smart phones but easily bored by studying?

It all boils down to something small and hard to see: dopamine(多巴胺). Dopamine is a “pleasure chemical(化学物质)” that makes people feel good. Our brains produce it when we eat yummy food, after we exercise or when we get a prize.

Compared with studying, playing with smart phones causes our brains to produce more dopamine. For example, checking our phone for a text leads to a 400 percent increase in dopamine. But why?

When we play with smart phones, we don’t know what we’ll see next, or who will send us a message. This uncertainty(不确定性) makes the dopamine system active. We get excited, wondering if we have messages from our friends. When our expectations are met, dopamine is produced. And to get more dopamine, we continue checking our phones. Studying doesn’t provide such uncertainty. Without this excitement, we get bored much more easily.

Can we do something to change that? According to scientists, apps can become less interesting if we turn off notifications(通知) or change the screen colors to black and white. We can also set time limits on apps to avoid using them too much.

“As for studying, you could check our progress daily or weekly and reward yourself for it,” said Daniel Wong, writer of The Happy Student. “You could also search for interesting topics connected with your textbooks. Use what you’ve learned to make a difference in the real world. This will make knowledge much more interesting to learn.”

1．What might the phrase “boils down to” mean in Paragraph 2?

A．gives up

B．turns on

C．hands in

D．results from

2．When do people have more dopamine?

A．When their expectations are met.	B．When they face less uncertainties.
C．When they know what will happen next.	D．When they stay in a friendly environment.

3．What is the main idea of Paragraph 4?

A．Why do people like uncertainty.

B．How to get more messages from our friends.

C．How scientists discover the way dopamine works.

D．Why playing with smartphones causes more dopamine.

4．How can we make apps less interesting according to Paragraph 5?
①Turn off notifications.        ②Check them less often.
③Set time limits and allow for breaks.        ④Change the screen colors to black and white.

A．①②

B．①③

C．①④

D．②④

5．What might Daniel advise us to do to make learning interesting?

A．Set time limits before we learning.	B．Put what we’ve learnt into practice.
C．Check our learning progress every term.	D．Read the interesting parts in the textbooks first.