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In the sentence “A crossing in central London had...
Instruction: Answer questions 29 to 36 based on the following text.
Press me! The button that lies to you
01 ___ The tube pulls in to a busy station along the London Underground’s Central Line. It is early
02 evening on a Thursday. A gaggle of commuters assembles inside and outside the train, waiting
03 for the doors to open. A moment of impatience grips one man who is nearest to them. He pushes
04 the square, green-rimmed button which says “open”. A second later, the doors satisfyingly part.
05 The crowds mingle, jostling on and off the train, and their journeys continue. Yet whether or not
06 the traveller knew it, his finger had no effect on the mechanism.
07___ Some would call this a “placebo button”– a button which, objectively speaking, provides no
08 control over a system, but which to the user at least is psychologically fulfilling to push. It turns
09 out that there are plentiful examples of buttons which do nothing and indeed other technologies
10 which are purposefully designed to deceive us. But here’s the really surprising thing. Many
11 increasingly argue that we actually benefit from the illusion that we are in control of something –
12 even when, from the observer’s point of view, we’re not.
13 ___ In 2013, BBC News Magazine discovered that pedestrian crossings all over the UK were the
14 wellspring of placebo buttons. A crossing in central London had programmed intervals for red and
15 green lights, for example. Pushing the button would only impact the length of these intervals
16 between midnight and 7am. ___ several other cities during busy periods, the crossings were
17 programmed to alternate their signals at a specific rate. The buttons did nothing, but a “wait”
18 light would still come on when they were pressed and, yes, people still pressed them presumably
19 believing that their actions were having an effect.
20 ___ Certain psychologists would argue that the buttons were indeed having an effect – just not
21 ___ the traffic lights themselves. Instead the effect is in the commuter’s minds. To understand
22 this you have to go back to the early 1970s. At that time, psychologist Ellen Langer, now a
23 professor ____ Harvard, was a Yale graduate student. During a five-card draw game of poker she
24 dealt one set of cards in a haphazard order. “Everybody,” she says, “got crazy. The cards
25 somehow belonged to the other person even though you couldn’t see any of them.” Langer
26 decided to find out more about the way people regulated the playing of such games. She went to
27 a casino where, at the slot machines, she found gamblers with elaborate ways of pulling the lever.
28 At another time a “highly rational” fellow student tried to explain to her why tossing a pair of dice
29 could be done in a certain way to affect the numbers which came up. “People believed that all of
30 these behaviours were going to increase the probability of their winning,” she comments.
31 ___ In 1975, she wrote a paper where she described the significance of these beliefs and coined a
32 term for the effect that they had on people: the “illusion of control”. However, instead of framing
33 this as an irrational delusion, Langer described the effect as a positive thing. “Feeling you have
34 control over your world is a desirable state,” she explains. When it comes to those deceptive
35 traffic light buttons, Langer says there could be a whole host of reasons why the placebo effect
36 might be counted as a good thing. “Doing something is better than doing nothing, so people
37 believe,” she says. “And when you go to press the button your attention is on the activity at hand.
38 If I’m just standing at the corner, I may not even see the light change, or I might only catch the
39 last part of the change, in which case I could put myself in danger.”
40 ___ Also, if pedestrians wait together at the crossing and a few press the button impatiently, that
41 creates a sense of togetherness with strangers which might otherwise be absent. All of these
42 things may be taken as positive impacts on our mental state, and even socially reinforcing.
43___ It’s something to think about next time you cross the street.
(Source: Adapted from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150415-the-buttons-that-do-nothing)
In the sentence “A crossing in central London had programmed intervals for red and green lights” (l.14-15), the underlined verbal locution is in the ________________. If we put it in the present perfect continuous, it would be written as ______________.
Mark the alternative that correctly and respectively fill in the blanks above.
A
past perfect – had been programming
B
past perfect – has been programming
C
present perfect – have been programmed
D
present perfect – have being programmed
E
simple past – has programming