TASK 4. (0-7)
Read two texts about human memory. For questions 4.1.-4.7., choose the answer that best
matches the text and circle the appropriate letter (A, B, C or D).
Text 1
SUPER RECOGNIZERS
On a hot August afternoon in 2011, as rioters looted and cars burned in the streets, a group of
police officers were gathered in a room in London. Projected on the wall was the blurry shape
of a man with a black woolen hat pulled deep over his forehead and a red bandana covering all
but his eyes. Security cameras had tracked the man setting fire to cars, stealing from shops and
attacking passers-by. At that moment, Constable Gary Collins walked in. He took one look and
said, “That’s Stephen Prince.” The last time he had come face to face with Stephen Prince was
in 2005. It was just a fleeting encounter in court, but it was enough. Over a two-week time span
prior to the meeting, Collins had identified 180 suspects out of 4000 captured by security
cameras in the London riots. Meanwhile, other officers who had applied profile and facial
recognition software had managed to identify just one suspect.
With its estimated one million security cameras, London is pioneering a new area of detection,
one that could be cheaper than DNA analysis and fingerprinting and relies above all on human
superpowers. Scotland Yard’s ever-expanding team of super recognizers is made up of men and
women from across the force who score at the top end of a facial recognition test originally
devised at Harvard in 2009. Constable Collins, the star of the unit, is in the rarefied top 1 percent
range. The term ‘super recognizers’ was coined in 2009 by Richard Russell, a postdoctoral
researcher at Harvard, whose work inspired the police authorities to make use of super
recognizers’ skills. Russell was studying people with prosopagnosia, that is face blindness. He
found that about 2 percent of people had a very poor ability to recognize faces. Then he grew
curious if there were people at the other end of the spectrum, with extraordinary facial recall.
Russell tested four individuals who believed they had superior face-recognition ability. The
tasks included the Face Memory Test and a quiz in which participants have to identify
celebrities from photographs taken mostly when they were children. All four participants scored
far better than the norm. When Russell did larger-scale experiments, he concluded that 1 or 2
percent of people were super recognizers.
Constable Collins, an unassuming man with cropped graying hair and a soft Cockney lilt,
patrols the same streets in North London he grew up in. He has become famous among
colleagues and villains alike. One of his colleagues likens his mind to a rotating file, “You show
him a photo, 30 seconds later the name pops up. And he’s always on the mark.” It turns out,
however, that super recognizers’ ability to remember silhouettes and faces is rarely matched by
the ability to remember other details of their lives. It is unbelievable that Constable Collins,
who has identified over 800 suspects, is incapable of remembering a shopping list.
Possessing such a skill is not without its pitfalls. When off duty, Constable Collins tends to
stare at people a bit too long. Once he was almost punched by a teenager. “Some think I’m
being provocative, but I can’t help it,” he said. He deliberately moved out of London to avoid
running into wanted faces from his beat. But this is not a foolproof solution. Recently, he had
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to cut short an outing to the mall with his sons when he recognized a gaggle of gang members
while buying sneakers. He reckons that his oldest son, 11 years old and soccer-obsessed, is also
able to recognize faces. “He knows football players in countries and teams I haven’t even heard
of and immediately gives the names once they appear on TV. Who knows, one day he might
become a super recognizer as well.”
adapted from http://nymag.com
4.1. At the meeting in London, Constable Collins
A. was recognized by a suspect he had arrested in 2005.
B. questioned the reliability of security camera images.
C. exhibited his extraordinary recognizing capabilities.
D. managed to identify 180 suspects involved in the riots.
4.2. In the second paragraph, the aim of the author is
A. to undermine the outcomes of a study carried out by Richard Russell.
B. to show how academic research contributed to the creation of a new police squad.
C. to familiarize readers with the peculiarities of the Face Memory Test.
D. to enumerate practical applications of super recognizers’ abilities.
4.3. Which of the following sentences is NOT true about Constable Collins’ ability?
A. It is the reason why he is often delegated to different units.
B. It sometimes makes him look as if he was looking for trouble.
C. It occasionally turns out to be a nuisance in his private life.
D. It was a factor which contributed to his decision to change his place of residence.
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Text 2
MEMORY MAN
Amos Decker, finally back on duty, sat on a bench, waiting. A sparrow zipped across in front
of him, narrowly dodged a passing car before soaring upward, catching a breeze, and drifting
away. He noted the make, model, plate number, and physical descriptions of all the passengers
in the car before it passed him by. Then a bus rolled to a stop nearby. He ran his gaze over it,
making the same observations. A plane soared overhead, low enough for him to recognize it as
a United 737, a later model because of the winglets. Sleek, silver, fast, bullet-like. Two young
men walked past. Observed, recorded. Next, a woman with a dog. A German shepherd. Not that
old but with bad hips. Probably dysplasia, common in the breed. Recorded. A man jabbering
away on his smartphone. Dressed far too nicely. Maybe a hedge fund manager, malpractice
lawyer, or real estate developer. Memory stored. On the other side of the street an old woman
in a wheelchair was being rolled out of a medical transport van. Imprinted.
Cataloguing observations has become habitual though unintentional for him. Amos Decker
noted all of this and more as his mind sorted through everything that was in front of him.
Deducing here and there. Speculating sometimes. Guessing other times. He closed his eyes to
block out his recent street observations, though it was all still there, like a cinema screen on the
inside of his eyeballs. It would always be there. He often wanted to forget what he had just seen.
But everything in his head was recorded in permanent marker. He either dialled it up when
needed or it popped up of its own accord. The former was helpful, the latter infinitely
frustrating.
A few long months earlier, tormented by compulsive memories of his wife prematurely passing
away, he had hit rock bottom. He ceased to see his clients and gave up all his cases. He lost the
house to foreclosure, and “downsized” to a sleeping bag in the park. Bloated, dirty, wild-haired,
bushy-bearded, he looked as if he was living in a cave somewhere, attempting to conspire with
aliens. And he pretty much was, until he woke up in a Walmart parking lot one morning not
long ago, staring at a Georgia-Pacific logo on the inside of his corrugated box and had the
churning epiphany that Cassie would have been deeply ashamed of what he had become. So he
cleaned himself up, worked a bunch of odd jobs and saved some dollars to temporarily move
into a room in the suburbs. He hung out his Private Investigator shingle and took whatever cases
came his way. They were mostly lowball, low pay, but they were something. His beard was still
bushy, his hair still pretty wild, but his clothes were reasonably clean. Progress was always to
be measured in inches, especially when you didn’t have yards or even feet of success to show
off.
Suddenly, a loud bang brought him back to reality. As he looked to his left, he saw it was time
to get to the next stage of his surveillance. He rose and headed after the two people he’d been
waiting for.
adapted from Memory Man by David Baldacci
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4.4. While sitting on the bench, Amos
A. recognized a lawyer he used to do business with.
B. noticed a bird which was hit by a speeding vehicle.
C. identified a plane by a construction detail.
D. caught a glimpse of a disabled woman fending for herself.
4.5. The second paragraph focuses on
A. Amos’ ability to control the processing of information in his brain.
B. the ways Amos filters the observations he makes.
C. an array of thought processes taking place in Amos’ brain.
D. the usefulness of Amos’ ability to store information.
4.6. After his wife’s death, Amos
A. felt that society wanted to alienate him.
B. had his property seized.
C. was made redundant due to his sloppy looks.
D. decided to dispose of objects bringing back memories of her.
4.7. After overcoming his emotional crisis, Amos
A. put away enough to afford the rent on a room.
B. radically changed his image overnight.
C. acted hastily to make up for lost time.
D. became fussier about his choice of assignments.
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