Visual Symbols and the Blind
Part 1
From a number of recent studies, it has become clear that blind people can appreciate the use of outlines and perspectives to describe the arrangement of objects and other surfaces in space. But pictures are more than literal representations. This fact was drawn to my attention dramatically when a blind woman in one of my investigations decided on her own initiative to draw a wheel as it was spinning. To show this motion, she traced a curve inside the circle (Fig. 1). l was taken aback. Lines of motion, such as the one she used, are a very recent invention in the history of illustration. Indeed, as art scholar David Kunzle notes, Wilhelm Busch, a trend-setting nineteenth-century cartoonist, used virtually no motion lines in his popular figures until about 1877.
When l asked several other blind study subjects to draw a spinning wheel, one particularly clever rendition appeared repeatedly: several subjects showed the wheel’s spokes as curved lines. When asked about these curves, they all described them as metaphorical ways of suggesting motion. Majority rule would argue that this device somehow indicated motion very well. But was it a better indicator than, say, broken or wavy lines - or any other kind of line, for that matter? The answer was not clear. So I decided to test whether various lines of motion were apt ways of showing movement or if they were merely idiosyncratic marks. Moreover, I wanted to discover whether there were differences in how the blind and the sighted interpreted lines of motion.
To search out these answers, I created raised-line drawings of five different wheels, depicting spokes with lines that curved, bent, waved, dashed and extended beyond the perimeter of the wheel. I then asked eighteen blind volunteers to feel the wheels and assign one of the following motions to each wheel: wobbling, spinning fast, spinning steadily, jerking or braking. My control group consisted of eighteen sighted undergraduates from the University of Toronto.
All but one of the blind subjects assigned distinctive motions to each wheel. Most guessed that the curved spokes indicated that the wheel was spinning steadily; the wavy spokes, they thought, suggested that the wheel was wobbling; and the bent spokes were taken as a sign that the wheel was jerking. Subjects assumed that spokes extending beyond the wheel’s perimeter signified that the wheel had its brakes on and that dashed spokes indicated the wheel was spinning quickly.
In addition, the favoured description for the sighted was the favoured description for the blind in every instance. What is more, the consensus among the sighted was barely higher than that among the blind. Because motion devices are unfamiliar to the blind, the task I gave them involved some problem solving. Evidently, however, the blind not only figured out meanings for each line of motion, but as a group they generally came up with the same meaning at least as frequently as did sighted subjects.
Part 2
We have found that the blind understand other kinds of visual metaphors as well. One blind woman drew a picture of a child inside a heart - choosing that symbol, she said, to show that love surrounded the child. With Chang Hong Liu, a doctoral student from China, I have begun exploring how well blind people understand the symbolism behind shapes such as hearts that do not directly represent their meaning.
We gave a list of twenty pairs of words to sighted subjects and asked them to pick from each pair the term that best related to a circle and the term that best related to a square. For example, we asked: What goes with soft? A circle or a square? Which shape goes with hard?
All our subjects deemed the circle soft and the square hard. A full 94% ascribed happy to the circle, instead of sad. But other pairs revealed less agreement: 79% matched fast to slow and weak to strong, respectively. And only 51%linked deep to circle and shallow to square. (See Fig. 2.) When we tested four totally blind volunteers using the same list, we found that their choices closely resembled those made by the sighted subjects. One man, who had been blind since birth, scored extremely well. He made only one match differing from the consensus, assigning ‘far’ to square and ‘near’ to circle. In fact, only a small majority of sighted subjects- 53% - had paired far and near to the opposite partners. Thus, we concluded that the blind interpret abstract shapes as sighted people do.
Words associated with circle/square Agreement among subjects (%)
SOFT-HARD 100
MOTHER-FATHER 94
HAPPY-SAD 94
GOOD-EVIL 89
LOVE-HATE 89
ALIVE-DEAD 87
BRIGHT-DARK 87
LIGHT-HEAVY 85
WARM-COLD 81
SUMMER-WINTER 81
WEAK-STRONG 79
FAST-SLOW 79
CAT-DOG 74
SPRING-FALL 74
QUIET-LOUD 62
WALKING-STANDING 62
ODD-EVEN 57
FAR-NEAR 53
PLANT-ANIMAL 53
DEEP-SHALLOW 51
Fig. 2 Subjects were asked which word in each pair fits best with a circle and which with a square. These percentages show the level of consensus among sighted subjects.
Questions 27-29
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 27-29 on your answer sheet.
27 In the first paragraph the writer makes the point that blind people
A may be interested in studying art.
B can draw outlines of different objects and surfaces.
C can recognize conventions such as perspective.
D can draw accurately.
28 The writer was surprised because the blind woman
A drew a circle on her own initiative.
B did not understand what a wheel looked like.
C included a symbol representing movement.
D was the first person to use lines of motion.
29 From the experiment described in Part 1, the writer found that the blind subjects
A had good understanding of symbols representing movement.
B could control the movement of wheels very accurately.
C worked together well as a group in solving problems.
D got better results than the sighted undergraduates.
Questions 30-32
Look at the following diagrams (Questions 30-32), and the list of types of movement below. Match each diagram to the type of movement A-E generally assigned to it in the experiment. Choose the correct letter A-E and write them in boxes 30-32 on your answer sheet.
A steady spinning
B jerky movement
C rapid spinning
D wobbling movement
E use of brakes
Questions 33-39
Complete the summary below using words from the box. Write your answers inboxes 33-39 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any word more than once.
In the experiment described in Part 2, a set of word 33 ………… was used to investigate whether blind and sighted people perceived the symbolism in abstract 34 ………… in the same way.Subjects were asked which word fitted best with a circle and which with a square. From the 35 ………… volunteers, everyone thought a circle fitted ‘soft’ while a square fitted ‘hard’. However, only 51% of the 36 ………… volunteers assigned a circle to 37 ………… When the test was later repeated with 38 ………… volunteers, it was found that they made
39 ………… choices.
associations blind deep hard
hundred identical pairs shapes
sighted similar shallow soft words
Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answer inbox 40 on your answer sheet. Which of the following statements best summarizes the writer’s general conclusion?,
A The blind represent some aspects of reality differently from sighted people.
B The blind comprehend visual metaphors in similar ways to sighted people.
C The blind may create unusual and effective symbols to represent reality.
D The blind may be successful artists if given the right training.
艹，真tmd烦躁
先看题型，第一部分归纳题，瞄一眼标题，但应该是顺序题，；第二部分图表题，应该是乱序题；第三部分细节题，应该是顺序题；最后的是总结题。所以做题顺序先做第一三部分，然后是第二部分，最后是总结题。
Q27 关键字为 1st paragraph，blind people
Part 1
From a number of recent studies, it has become clear that blind people can appreciate the use of outlines and perspectives to describe the arrangement of objects and other surfaces in space. But（But 后面要关注） pictures are more than literal representations（盲人能用outline和perspective来描述东西，但picture更好，所以Q27老子选C）. This fact was drawn to my attention dramatically when a blind woman（Q28关键字） in one of my investigations decided on her own initiative to draw a wheel as it was spinning. To show this motion, she traced a curve inside the circle（Q28答案，选C） (Fig. 1). l was taken aback（Q28同义转换，后来做完查了字典才发现-__-!）. Lines of motion, such as the one she used, are a very recent invention in the history of illustration. Indeed, as art scholar David Kunzle notes, Wilhelm Busch, a trend-setting nineteenth-century cartoonist, used virtually no motion lines in his popular figures until about 1877.
Q29 开始提到一个实验，这里注意相关的内容。
When l asked several other blind study subjects to draw a spinning wheel, one particularly clever rendition appeared repeatedly: several subjects showed the wheel’s spokes as curved lines. When asked about these curves, they all described them as metaphorical ways of suggesting motion（盲人受试者使用曲线来代表轮子的转动，所以根据这里，Q29填 A，接下来开始注意Q30~Q32）. Majority rule would argue that this device somehow indicated motion very well. But was it a better indicator than, say, broken or wavy lines - or any other kind of line, for that matter? The answer was not clear. So I decided to test whether various lines of motion were apt ways of showing movement or if they were merely idiosyncratic marks. Moreover, I wanted to discover whether there were differences in how the blind and the sighted interpreted lines of motion.
To search out these answers, I created raised-line drawings of five different wheels, depicting spokes with lines that curved, bent, waved, dashed and extended beyond the perimeter of the wheel（提供了5个形状的轮子，应该问题就在这后面）. I then asked eighteen blind volunteers to feel the wheels and assign one of the following motions to each wheel: wobbling, spinning fast, spinning steadily, jerking or braking. My control group consisted of eighteen sighted undergraduates from the University of Toronto.
All but one of the blind subjects assigned distinctive motions to each wheel. Most guessed that the curved spokes indicated that the wheel was spinning steadily; the wavy spokes, they thought, suggested that the wheel was wobbling; and the bent spokes were taken as a sign that the wheel was jerking. Subjects assumed that spokes extending beyond the wheel’s perimeter signified that the wheel had its brakes on and that dashed spokes indicated the wheel was spinning quickly.
然后看三张图，分别找出对应项
Q30: extending beyond the wheel’s perimeter -> brake, E
Q31: dashed -> spinning quickly, C
Q32: 我艹，这个不知道啊，curved spoke应该是图1里面那样子吧？剩下wavy（波浪）和bent（弯曲），这个猜波浪好了，D（虽然不知道wobbling啥意思）
下面一段直接跳过不看，看鸡毛啊
In addition, the favored description for the sighted was the favored description for the blind in every instance. What is more, the consensus among the sighted was barely higher than that among the blind. Because motion devices are unfamiliar to the blind, the task I gave them involved some problem solving. Evidently, however, the blind not only figured out meanings for each line of motion, but as a group they generally came up with the same meaning at least as frequently as did sighted subjects.
Part 2
Q33~39找关键字，关键字是blind&sighted，abstract，same way，soft，hard，51%等，开始扫读。同时因为题目中说了NB，所以肯定有一个单词用了2次。
We have found that the blind understand other kinds of visual metaphors as well. One blind woman drew a picture of a child inside a heart - choosing that symbol, she said, to show that love surrounded the child. With Chang Hong Liu, a doctoral student from China, I have begun exploring how well blind people understand the symbolism behind shapes such as hearts that do not directly represent their meaning.
We gave a list of twenty pairs of words（Q33 paris） to sighted subjects and asked them to pick from each pair the term that best related to a circle and the term that best related to a square（有圆形和方形，所以Q34填 shapes）. For example, we asked: What goes with soft? A circle or a square? Which shape goes with hard?
All our subjects（上面一段，Q33答案后面一点，说了sighted subject，所以Q35填sighted） deemed the circle soft and the square hard. A full 94% ascribed happy to the circle, instead of sad. But other pairs revealed less agreement: 79% matched fast to slow and weak to strong, respectively. And only 51% （Q36 还是sighted，因为后面说了接下来对盲人做测试） linked deep to circle（Q37，deep） and shallow to square. (See Fig. 2.) When we tested four totally blind volunteers（Q38，blind） using the same list, we found that their choices closely resembled（Q39 similar） those made by the sighted subjects. One man, who had been blind since birth, scored extremely well. He made only one match differing from the consensus, assigning ‘far’ to square and ‘near’ to circle. In fact, only a small majority of sighted subjects- 53% - had paired far and near to the opposite partners. Thus, we concluded that the blind interpret abstract shapes as sighted people do.
最后看Q40，Summary，本文意思是说盲人和正常人在某些事物的判断上是一致的。所以选B
最后对一下答案
27 C
28 C
29 A
30 E
31 C
32
D
A，我艹32选steady spinning，好吧，你赢了
33 pairs
34 shapes
35 sighted
36 sighted
37 deep
38 blind
39 similar
40 B