BIOLOGY: PAIRED TEXTS
Name:
MAKING FACES
In “All About Emojis” you read about the process used to create emojis. In the following passage, you’ll learn how emoticons —simpler precursors to emojis—can change the way our brains interpret different stimuli. Read the passage, and then answer the questions that follow.
EMOTICONS ON THE BRAIN Before the invention of emojis, people used emoticons online to express how they were feeling. Using punctuation marks, people created and shared pictures that symbolized how they were feeling. Type a colon, a dash, and a close parenthesis, for example, :-) and you get a smiley face to express happiness.
characters like :-) that we know represent a face, a face-specific region in our brains gets activated. This region, called the occipitotemporal lobe, is responsible for vision and for processing speech. Interestingly, people don’t have the same neural reaction when they see this smiley face (-: symbol in reverse. Because of that, scientists think our brain’s reaction to emoticons isn’t a natural response but a learned one, shaped by cultural norms.
Despite how simple emoticons are, scientist have found that we respond to them just as we would real faces. When people see a familiar sequence of
QUESTIONS 1. Based on context clues, what is the BEST definition for the word neural ? A having to do with the brain or nervous system B relating to speech C having to do with technology D something we can see 2. What evidence suggests that the brain’s reaction to emoticons is learned instead of being a natural response?
4. Think about the author’s purpose for writing the article “All About Emojis.” How is it different from the author’s purpose in the passage above?
5. Technology is changing the way our brains respond to the world. What are some ways technology is altering how we interact with one another?
3. Why do you think scientists decided to study this topic? What purpose might the research serve?
Sessions 25 & 26 77
SEPTEMBER 23, 2019
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