| 任务型读写。 In a memorybased competition between you and a chimp (猩猩)；who do you think would win?If you put yourself on top, you might want to guess again. In a test that challenged participants to remember numbers, a young chimp performed better than Japanese college students. Here's how the test worked.At Kyoto University in Japan, human students and chimpanzee participants sat in front of a computer.Five numbers, ranging from 1 to 9, were combined with one another and then, they appeared at random places on the screen. The numbers stayed on the screen for less than a second.In the first test, for example, participants saw the numbers for 650 milliseconds (about twothirds of a second). Then, each number disappeared and they saw a white square instead.Participants had to touch the squares in numerical order, based on the numbers that had been there a moment before. In this test, the students touched the boxes in the correct order about 80% of the time.A young chimp named Ayumu performed equally well. During a harder test, participants were only able to see the numbers for 210 milliseconds. This time, students only succeeded in putting the boxes in the correct order about 40% of the time. But Ayumu still could select the boxes in the right order nearly 80% of the time. "Some people have what's called a 'photographic memory, ' which allows them to remember a surprising number of details after just a quick glimpse of something.Ayumu's memory might work in a similar way, " says lead researcher Tetsuro Matsusawa. The chimp's young age might have something to do with his impressive performance, too.In previous tests, the Japanese researchers found that young chimps performed better than their mothers. The scientists are interested to see whether Ayumu loses his strong memory as he grows older.They already know that young children sometimes have sharp memories when offered something photographical, but they lose this ability over time.
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