영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Working memory refers to the mental workspace in which information is ①temporarily held and manipulated while a person performs a cognitive task. Such tasks include solving an arithmetic problem, following a rapid conversation, or holding a phone number in mind before dialing it. In the mid-twentieth century, the psychologist George Miller proposed that this workspace could accommodate roughly seven discrete items. His claim proved so ②influential that it became widely known as the magic number seven. Subsequent research, however, revealed that Miller's estimate was somewhat ③conservative, since it failed to account for the complexity of the material being remembered. Nelson Cowan later argued that when rehearsal strategies are ④prevented and attention is tightly controlled, genuine capacity hovers closer to four items rather than seven. This discrepancy suggests that what earlier studies had measured was not raw storage capacity itself but a hybrid quantity ⑤inflated by clever strategies. Contemporary psychologists therefore distinguish between the fixed limit of working memory and the flexible techniques that allow individuals to transcend that limit.

Imagine rewriting a bacterium's code the way a programmer edits a line of software, and much of what synthetic biology ①promises begins to make sense. Researchers in this field assemble standardized genetic parts into circuits that can be inserted into a cell, instructing it to perform a task that no natural organism would ②carry out. Because these circuits are built from interchangeable parts rather than designed from scratch each time, a circuit tested in one lab can often be reused, with ③minor adjustments, in an entirely different application. Critics note that biological systems ④always behave as predictably as electronic circuits, since a gene inserted into a new cell can interact with existing pathways in unexpected ways, occasionally producing results no engineer intended. Even so, as the catalog of standardized parts keeps expanding, engineers are gaining ⑤confidence to design increasingly complex systems.

People routinely seek out information that confirms what they already believe while overlooking or dismissing evidence that contradicts those beliefs, a pattern known as confirmation bias. Investors who believe a particular company will succeed tend to interpret ambiguous news about that company favorably, while skeptical investors interpret identical news unfavorably, even though both groups are examining the same underlying facts. Correcting for this bias therefore requires deliberate effort, since the mind offers no natural signal indicating that its search for information has been ___________ rather than balanced.

Facial recognition software has moved rapidly from airport security lines into shopping malls, schools, and even private apartment buildings. (A) Independent studies, however, have repeatedly found that many commercial systems perform less accurately on women and people with darker skin tones. (B) Proponents note that the technology can unlock doors, catch shoplifters, and speed up identity checks far faster than any human guard could manage. (C) Several cities have already reported cases in which an innocent person was detained based on a flawed match.

Retailers have discovered practical ways to counteract the negative effects of choice overload without simply reducing the number of products they offer. (A) One common strategy involves organizing an extensive product catalog into clearly labeled categories and subcategories, allowing customers to narrow their search gradually rather than confronting the entire array at once. (B) Another approach highlights a small number of curated recommendations, such as "staff picks" or "best sellers," giving hesitant customers a reasonable starting point without eliminating other options entirely. (C) Both strategies share a common principle: they do not reduce the objective number of choices available but instead reduce the cognitive burden of navigating them.

For decades, most vaccines worked by injecting a weakened or inactivated version of a pathogen, coaxing the immune system into recognizing an enemy it had never truly fought. (A) mRNA vaccines take a fundamentally different route, delivering only a short genetic instruction wrapped in a protective lipid capsule, one that tells the body's own cells how to manufacture a single harmless piece of a virus's outer surface protein. (B) Once those cells display the fragment, the immune system learns to recognize it as foreign and builds a defense, without ever having encountered the actual pathogen. (C) Because the vaccine contains no live virus and cannot alter a cell's own DNA, developers can redesign the genetic instructions within weeks whenever a pathogen mutates, a speed that has convinced many researchers the same platform could eventually fight diseases far beyond infectious illness.

The anchoring effect is not limited to shopping decisions; it also plays a subtle but powerful role in legal and financial judgments. (A) Similarly, jurors who are told that a plaintiff is seeking an unusually large sum in damages tend to award higher compensation than jurors who hear no specific figure at all, even when the evidence presented is identical. (B) This pattern suggests that anchors can distort judgments requiring careful, case-by-case reasoning, not merely quick, intuitive estimates of price. (C) For instance, experienced judges asked to set a sentence after being exposed to an arbitrary number, such as one generated by rolling dice, have been shown in experimental settings to hand down harsher sentences when the number was high.

The human gut hosts trillions of microorganisms whose combined genetic material outnumbers that of the human genome itself many times over. (A) A microbiome disrupted by antibiotics, poor diet, or chronic stress can leave the gut lining more permeable than it should be, allowing substances to leak into the bloodstream that would normally stay contained. (B) Once dismissed as passive hitchhikers, these bacteria are now understood to actively shape digestion, regulate immune responses, and even influence the production of chemicals that affect mood and behavior. (C) Researchers studying this connection have found that transplanting gut bacteria from a healthy donor into a patient can relieve symptoms of certain digestive disorders, though the microbiome varies enormously between individuals, so a treatment that helps one person's gut may do little for someone else's.

Social media platforms rarely show users a neutral stream of information. (A) Over time, users exposed to a steady diet of emotionally charged content may come to believe that extreme opinions are far more common than they actually are. (B) Instead, recommendation algorithms are optimized to maximize engagement, and content that provokes strong emotion tends to hold attention longer than balanced reporting ever could. (C) Researchers describe this as a distorted mirror: the platform reflects not society as it truly is, but a version shaped by whatever keeps people scrolling.

Even so, the shift has proven immensely practical, sidestepping the objection that halted so much earlier research. A single fertilized egg eventually gives rise to every cell type in the human body, from neurons to bone, a feat that has fascinated biologists for more than a century. ( ① ) Embryonic stem cells retain much of that original versatility, capable in principle of developing into almost any tissue, which is why researchers have long viewed them as a promising raw material for repairing damaged organs. ( ② ) Because harvesting these cells traditionally required destroying a human embryo, the research provoked ethical objections fierce enough to slow funding and legislation in several countries for years. ( ③ ) A breakthrough arrived when scientists discovered that ordinary adult skin cells could be reprogrammed, through the introduction of a handful of specific genes, into a state resembling embryonic versatility without ever touching an embryo. ( ④ ) These induced pluripotent cells, as they are now called, have not entirely erased the ethical debate. ( ⑤ ) They have opened a path for stem cell research that far more scientists and funding agencies are willing to support.