IELTS Real Reading Test 2025 - Q3 Test 4 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Luyện tập đề IELTS Real Reading Test 2025 - Q3 Test 4 được lấy từ cuốn sách Real Test 2025 - Q3 với trải nghiệm thi IELTS trên máy và giải thích đáp án chi tiết bằng Linearthinking, kèm answer key và list từ vựng IELTS cần học trong bài đọc.
IELTS Real Reading Test 2025 - Q3 Test 4 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 1
Question 1 - 6
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Data on food deserts and their effects on health
The Brooklyn Food Association
- The online map provides users with a store's name,
1.
and details of its produce.
- One goal of the mapping project is to help authorities develop new
2.
on food.
- Citizen maps are sometimes made when
3.
maps are unsatisfactory.
Reasons for the development of food deserts
- New research suggests that people living in food deserts often have low
4.
.
- Some supermarkets are unable to buy enough
5.
inside cities for their stores.
- Small grocery stores in cities often cannot cope with supermarket
6.
.
Question 7 - 13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
7
A group of professional researchers are in charge of the Brooklyn project.
8
The Brooklyn project team carries out their assessment of stores without the owner's knowledge.
9
The Brooklyn project has experienced technical difficulties setting up the website.
10
The city government has taken a considerable interest in the Brooklyn project website.
11
Michele Ver Ploeg believes the Brooklyn project website should contain additional information.
12
The rate of internet use in Brooklyn is unlikely to increase in the near future.
13
Jeffrey Heehs would like more people to assist with the Brooklyn project research.
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 2
Question 14 - 19
The Reading Passage has six paragraphs A-F.
From the list of headings below choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph.
List of Headings
I
The effect of man-made imitations on insects
II
The need to instruct additional insect guides
III
Signals used by certain insects to indicate a discovery
IV
How urgency can affect the process of finding a new home
V
The use of trained insects in testing scientific theories
VI
The use of virtual scenarios in the study of insect behaviour
VII
How the number of decision-makers affects the decision
14
Paragraph A
15
Paragraph B
16
Paragraph C
17
Paragraph D
18
Paragraph E
19
Paragraph F
Question 20 - 23
Look at the following statements and the list of academics below.
Match each statement with the correct academic, A-D.
Write the correct letter, A-D.
NB you may use any letter more than once.
List of Findings
A
Nicolas de Condorcet
B
Christian List and colleagues
C
José Halloy
D
Nigel Franks and colleagues
20
Certain members can influence the rest of the group to alter a previous decision.
21
Individual verification of a proposed choice is important for successful decision outcome.
22
The more individuals taking part in a decision, the better the decision will be.
23
The decision-making process of certain insects produces excellent results even when fine distinctions are required.
Question 24 - 26
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
A study of insect decision-making
A Bristol University study looked at how insects make decisions when their home has been . The ants in the experiment relied on the use of individuals called to find a new nest and efficiently direct the others to go there. The study concluded that the effective implementation of the ants' decision meant that the insects could change homes quickly. The study emphasized the necessity, for people as well as insects, of having active in order to execute decisions successfully.
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 3
Question 27 - 31
Look at the following statements and the list of people below.
Match each statement with the person or people, A-D.
Choose the correct letter, A-D.NB You may use any letter more than once.
List of Findings
A
John Ridley Stroop
B
Ernst Pöppel
C
David E Meyer
D
Edward Halliwell & John Ratey
27
Less attention will be paid to each task when more than one task is attempted at the same time.
28
Repeated changes of task mean that the brain will take a while to adjust.
29
Using the skills required for one task may make performing another one more difficult.
30
When multitasking, the brain can only focus on single tasks for very short periods.
31
Multitasking can lead to a medical problem.
Question 32 - 34
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes on your answer sheet.
32
What is suggested about the worker in the opening paragraph?
A
Anxiety deprived him of sleep the previous night.
B
He feels overwhelmed by his workload.
C
His manager has expressed disapproval.
D
He finds his work dull and uninteresting.
33
Drivers and air traffic controllers are mentioned in the passage because they
A
need to perform several tasks at once.
B
are unable to maintain concentration.
C
use their time efficiently.
D
cannot afford to make mistakes.
34
In John Ridley Stroop’s experiment, participants found it difficult to
A
tell one colour from another.
B
match up pairs of similar colours.
C
read out the name of one colour printed in another colour.
D
decide what colour looks most appropriate for a particular word.
Question 35 - 39
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Multitasking and its effects on the brain
The stressful nature of multitasking has been shown to affect parts of the brain. The area most affected is the prefrontal cortex, which is found to the rear of the . It is the part of the brain which judges tasks, then puts them in order of importance and allocates ; it also enables a worker to resume a task which has been put to one side.
A second area, the hippocampus, may also be affected by the stress of multitasking. If any in the hippocampus are affected, people may have problems with storing , as well as learning .
Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes on your answer sheet.
40
The main aim of this passage is to
A
describe areas where multitasking is useful.
B
challenge widely held opinions on multitasking.
C
show the physical damage that multitasking can cause.
D
call for better psychological experiments on multitasking.
DOL IELTS Đình Lực
05/05/2026
📖 Bài đọc passage 1
How to find your way out of a food desert
Ordinary citizens have been using the internet to draw attention to the lack of healthy eating options in inner cities.
Over the last few months, a survey has been carried out of over 200 greengrocers and convenience stores in Crown Heights, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. As researchers from the Brooklyn Food Association enter the details, colorful dots appear on their online map, which display the specific location of each of the food stores in a handful of central Brooklyn neighborhoods. Clicking on a dot will show you the store's name and whether it carries fresh fruit and vegetables, wholegrain bread, low-fat dairy and other healthy options.
The researchers plan eventually to survey the entire borough of Brooklyn. "We want to get to a more specific and detailed description of what that looks like," says Jeffrey Heehs, who leads the project. He hopes it will help residents find fresh food in urban areas where the stores sell mostly packaged snacks or fast food, areas otherwise known as food deserts. The aim of the project is also to assist government officials in assessing food availability, and in forming future policies about what kind of food should be sold and where.
In fact, the Brooklyn project represents the intersection of two growing trends: mapping fresh food markets in US cities, and private citizens creating online maps of local neighborhood features. According to Michael Goodchild, a geographer at the University of California at Santa Barbara, citizen map makers may make maps because there is no good government map, or to record problems such as burned-out traffic lights.
According to recent studies, people at higher risk of chronic disease and who receive minimal incomes for the work they do, frequently live in neighborhoods located in food deserts. But how did these food deserts arise? Linda Alwitt and Thomas Donley, marketing researchers at DePaul University in Chicago, found that supermarkets often can't afford the amount of land required for their stores in cities. City planning researcher Cliff Guy and colleagues at the University of Leeds in the UK found in 2004 that smaller urban groceries tend to close due to competition from suburban supermarkets.
As fresh food stores leave a neighborhood, residents find it harder to eat well and stay healthy. Food deserts are linked with lower local health outcomes, and they may be a driving force in the health disparities between lower-income and afluent people in the US. Until recently, the issue attracted little national attention, and received no ongoing funding for research.
Now, more cities are becoming aware of their food landscapes. Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture launched a map of where food stores are located in all the US counties. Mari Gallagher, who runs a private consulting firm, says her researchers have mapped food stores and related them to health statistics for the cities of Detroit, Chicago, Cincinnati and Washington, D.C. These maps help cities identify where food deserts are and, occasionally, have documented that people living in food deserts have higher rates of diet-related diseases.
The Brooklyn project differs in that it's run by a local core of five volunteers who have worked on the project for the past year, rather than trained, academic researchers. To gather data, they simply go to individual stores with pre-printed surveys in hand, and once the storekeeper's permission has been obtained, check off boxes on their list against the products for sale in the store. Their approach to data collection and research has been made possible by technologies such as mapping software and GPS-enabled smartphones, Google Maps and OpenStreetMap, an open-source online map with a history of involvement in social issues. Like the Brooklyn Food Association volunteers, many citizen online map makers use maps to bring local problems to official attention, Goodchild says. Heehs, the mapping project leader, says that after his group gathers more data, it will compare neighborhoods, come up with solutions to address local needs, and then present them to New York City officials.
Their website hasn't caught much local or official attention yet, however. It was launched only recently, but its creators haven't yet set up systems to see who's looking at it. Experts who visited the Brooklyn group's site were optimistic but cautious. "This kind of detailed information could be very useful," says Michele Ver Ploeg, an economist for the Department of Agriculture. To make the map more helpful to both residents and policy makers, she would like to see price data for healthy products, too. Karen Ansel, a registered dietician and a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, found the site confusing to navigate. "That said, with this information in place the group has the tools to build a more user-friendly site that could be... very helpful to consumers," she says. "The group also should ensure their map is available to those who don't have internet access at home," she adds. In fact, a significant proportion of Brooklyn residents don't have internet at home, and 8 percent rely on dial-up service, instead of high-speed internet access, according to Gretchen Maneval, director of Brooklyn College's Center for the Study of Brooklyn. "It's still very much a work in progress," Heehs says of the online map. They'll start advertising it online and by email to other community groups, such as urban food garden associations, next month. He also hopes warmer days in the spring will draw out fresh volunteers to spread awareness and to finish surveying, as they have about two-thirds of Brooklyn left to cover.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 1
1
location
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Gap Fill
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail) + Predict Word Form + Meaning
Simplified: The online map provides users with a store's name + _____ + details of its produce
Main idea: Bản đồ trực tuyến → cung cấp 3 thông tin chính: tên cửa hàng + ____ + chi tiết sản phẩm.
Prediction: Danh từ (N) → Thông tin được nhắc chung với tên cửa hàng + chi tiết sản phẩm.
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khoá: “online map”, “store’s name”, “details”
→ Tìm đoạn văn mô tả các thông tin mà bản đồ trực tuyến hiển thị.
-> Dựa vào các từ khoá trên, có thể tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn 1.
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌Trích dẫn: "...colorful dots appear on their online map, which display the specific location of each of the food stores in a handful of central Brooklyn neighborhoods. Clicking on a dot will show you the store's name and whether it carries fresh fruit and vegetables, wholegrain bread, low-fat dairy and other healthy options." (Đoạn 1)
Simplified: Dots on their online map display the specific location of each store
Clicking on a dot will show you the store’s name + whether it carries fresh fruit [...] & other options
Main idea: Bản đồ → hiển thị vị trí cụ thể của từng cửa hàng + tên cửa hàng + sản phẩm bán.
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Bản đồ hiển thị vị trí cụ thể (specific location) của cửa hàng + tên cửa hàng + chi tiết sản phẩm.
Trong câu hỏi: Bản đồ cung cấp tên cửa hàng + ____ + chi tiết sản phẩm.
→ Từ còn thiếu: vị trí = "location"
A. It has long been held that decisions made collectively by large groups of people are more likely to turn out to be accurate than decisions made by individuals. The idea goes back to the ‘jury theorem’ of Nicolas de Condorcet, an 18th-century French philosopher who was one of the first to apply mathematics to the social sciences. Condorcet’s theory describes collective decisions, outlining how democratic decisions tend to outperform dictatorial ones. If, for example, each member of a jury has only partial information, the majority decision is more likely to be correct than a decision arrived at by a single juror. Moreover, the probability of a correct decision increases with the size of the jury.
B
Now it is becoming clear that group decisions are also extremely valuable for the success of social animals, such as ants, bees, birds and dolphins. Bees make collective decisions, and they do it rather well, according to Christian List of the London School of Economics, who has studied group decision-making in humans and animals. Researchers led by Dr List looked at colonies once the original colony reaches a certain size. The queen goes off with about two-thirds of the worker bees to live in a new home or nest, leaving a daughter queen in the old nest with the remaining workers. Among the bees that depart are some that have searched for and found some new nest sites, and reported back using a characteristic body movement known as a ‘waggle dance’ to indicate to the other bees the suitable places they have located. The longer the dance, the better the site. After a while, other bees start to visit the sites signaled by their companions to see for themselves and, on their return, also perform more waggle dances. The process eventually leads to a consensus on the best site and the breakaway swarm migrates. The decision is remarkably reliable, with the bees choosing the best site even when there is only a small difference between alternative sites.
C
But exactly how do bees reach such a robust consensus? To find out, Dr List and his colleagues used a computer generated model of the decision-making process. By experimenting with it they found that, when bees in the model were very good at finding nesting sites but did not share their information, this dramatically slowed down the migration, leaving the swarm homeless and vulnerable. Conversely, bees in the model blindly following the waggle dances of others without first checking. The researchers concluded that the ability of bees to identify successfully and quickly the best site depends on both the bees 'interdependence' in communicating the whereabouts of the bees site, and their independence in confirming this information for themselves.
D
Another situation in which collective decisions are taken occurs when animals are either isolated from crucial sources of information or dominated by other members of the group. José Halloy of the Free University of Brussels in Belgium used robotic cockroaches to subvert the behaviour of living cockroaches and control their decision-making process. In his experiment, the artificial bugs were introduced to the live ones and soon became sufficiently socially integrated that they were perceived by the real cockroaches as equals. By manipulating the robots, which were in the minority, Halloy was able to persuade the living cockroaches to choose an inappropriate shelter - even one which they had rejected before being infiltrated by the robots.
E
The way insects put into effect collective decisions can be complex and as important as the decisions themselves. At the University of Bristol, in the UK, Nigel Franks and his colleagues studied how a species of ant establishes a new nest. Franks and his associates reported how the insects reduce the problems associated with making a necessarily swift choice. If the ants’ existing nest become suddenly threatened, the insects choose certain ants to act as scouts to find a new nest. How quickly they accomplish the transfer to a new home depends not only on how soon the best available site is found, but also on how quickly the migration there can be achieved.
F
Once the suitable new nest is identified, the chosen ants begin to lead others, which have made it to the new site or which may simply be in the vicinity, back to the original threatened nest. In this way, those ants which are familiar with the route can help transport, for example, the queen and young ants to the new site, and simultaneously show the way to those ants which have been left behind to guard the old nest. In this way moving processes are accomplished faster and more efficiently. Thus the dynamics of collective decision-making are closely related to the efficient implementation of those decisions. How this might apply to choices that humans make is, as yet, unclear. But it does suggest, even for humans, the importance of recruiting dynamic leaders to a cause, because the most important thing about collective decision-making, as shown by these insect experiments, is to get others to follow.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 2
14
VII
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Matching Headings
✅ Paragraph A → Đáp án đúng: G. How the number of decision-makers affects the decision
-------
📌 Giải thích chi tiết
Step 01: Read to understand main idea
→ Đại ý toàn đoạn: Đoạn A phân tích cách mà số lượng người tham gia vào quá trình ra quyết định ảnh hưởng trực tiếp đến độ chính xác của quyết định, cho thấy quyết định tập thể thường hiệu quả hơn quyết định cá nhân.
-------
Step 02: Compare meaning with meaning
– Đại ý của đoạn:Ảnh hưởng của số lượng người ra quyết định đối với kết quả quyết định.
=> Chọn đáp án đúng:G. How the number of decision-makers affects the decision
– Giải thích: Heading G khớp hoàn toàn vì toàn bộ đoạn tập trung chứng minh một luận điểm duy nhất: càng nhiều người tham gia quyết định, khả năng quyết định đúng càng cao.
Doing more than one thing at once – is it always a good idea?
You arrive at the office, review your to-do list and start to feel a headache coming on. You resolve to tackle the items as quickly as possible. While you return calls, you sort email and other letters. You begin keying in slides for tomorrow's presentation. Then your manager comes in wanting an immediate update on sales figures. You have just opened the spreadsheet when a very important customer calls. With the receiver held between your shoulder and your ear, you continue adding up the sales totals until, 15 minutes later, you finally manage, politely, to get rid of the client. You've been multitasking again.
You may believe that anyone who wants to get ahead today should master the art of multitasking. However, a recent study by the Families and Work Institute in New York City has found that 45 per cent of US workers believe that they are asked or expected to work on too many tasks at once. Managers may be surprised to learn that they are actually wasting their workers' time. As it turns out, the human brain cannot really master the computer's art of crunching data in the background while moving between process windows. Instead, a growing number of studies show that trying to juggle jobs rather than completing them sequentially can take longer, and leave workers with a reduced ability to perform each task. In addition, the stress associated with multitasking may contribute to short-term memory difficulties. The combination results in inefficiency, careless thinking and mistakes – not to mention the possible dangers of divided attention for drivers, air traffic controllers, and others who handle machinery.
How can a time management strategy that has become part of the common wisdom actually be so wrong? Exploring that question requires a closer look at an area of consciousness research that examines how the brain focuses attention. One of the modern foundations of current knowledge of multitasking was laid in 1935, when the American – psychologist John Ridley Stroop reported that processing information from one task could cause interference with another. Stroop noticed that when study participants were asked to name the colour of a word – such as 'green' – printed in a different colour – red, for example they experienced difficulty saying the name of the colour. This phenomenon is thought to occur when two tasks get tangled: the brain must suppress one that has been learned so well that it has become automatic (reading), to attend to a second task that requires concentration (naming the colour).
During the past couple of decades, psychologists have probed more deeply into the nature and limitations of multitasking. Psychologist and brain researcher Ernst Pöppel, of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, believes that it is impossible to carry out two or three different tasks simultaneously with the same degree of concentration. He says that seemingly simultaneous awareness and processing of information actually takes place in 'three-second windows'. In these three-second segments, the brain takes in, as a block, all the data about the environment streaming in from the sensory systems; subsequent events are processed in the next window. So a person can concentrate on a conversation for three seconds, then for three seconds on a crying child, and three seconds on a computer screen. While one subject at a time occupies the foreground of consciousness, the others stay in the background until they, in turn, are given access to the central processor.
Another experiment by psychologist David E Meyer, of the University of Michigan, quantified just how much time we can lose when we shuttle between tasks. The researchers asked test participants to write a report and check their email at the same time. Those individuals who constantly jumped back and forth between the two tasks took about one and a half times as long to finish as those who completed one job before turning to the other. Each switchover from one task to another meant rethinking, and thus involved additional neural resources. In effect, the brain needs time to shut off the rules for one task and to turn on the rules for another. 'Multitasking saves time only when it is a matter of relaxed, routine tasks,' Meyer says. It also takes the brain longer to adapt when switching rapidly back to an interrupted task, rather than waiting longer before switching back.
By its nature multitasking is stressful, and the area in the brain most involved with multitasking is also most affected by the resulting stress. Located behind the forehead, the prefrontal cortex, which neuroscientists call the 'executive' part of the brain, helps us to assess tasks, prioritise them and assign mental resources. It also 'marks' the spot at which a task has been interrupted, so that we can return to it later. This stress can also affect brain cells in another region, the hippocampus, which is important for forming new memories; damage in that area also makes it difficult for a person to acquire new skills.
Psychiatrists Edward Halliwell and John Ratey, of Harvard University, say that multitasking can bring about a brain condition that causes sufferers to constantly seek new information while having difficulties concentrating on its content. All in all, it may be wise to let the email wait while you work on your presentation. You will save time and perform each task better.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 3
27
B
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Matching Names
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail)
Simplified:
Less attention will be paid to each task when more than one task is attempted at the same time
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khoá: "attention", "tasks", "concentration", "at the same time/simultaneously"
=> Dựa vào các từ khoá trên -> Tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn 4 - cần xác định ai cho rằng không thể duy trì mức độ tập trung như nhau khi làm nhiều việc cùng lúc.
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: "Psychologist and brain researcher Ernst Pöppel, of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, believes that it is impossible to carry out two or three different tasks simultaneously with the same degree of concentration."
Simplified: Ernst Pöppel believes it is impossible to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously with the same degree of concentration
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Ernst Pöppel cho rằng không thể thực hiện nhiều nhiệm vụ đồng thời với cùng một mức độ tập trung.
Trong câu hỏi: Khi làm nhiều việc cùng lúc, sự chú ý dành cho mỗi việc sẽ giảm.
Over the last few months, a survey has been carried out of over 200 greengrocers and convenience stores in Crown Heights, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. As researchers from the Brooklyn Food Association enter the details, colorful dots appear on their online map, which display the specific location of each of the food stores in a handful of central Brooklyn neighborhoods. Clicking on a dot will show you the store's name and whether it carries fresh fruit and vegetables, wholegrain bread, low-fat dairy and other healthy options.
The researchers plan eventually to survey the entire borough of Brooklyn. "We want to get to a more specific and detailed description of what that looks like," says Jeffrey Heehs, who leads the project. He hopes it will help residents find fresh food in urban areas where the stores sell mostly packaged snacks or fast food, areas otherwise known as food deserts. The aim of the project is also to assist government officials in assessing food availability, and in forming future policies about what kind of food should be sold and where.
In fact, the Brooklyn project represents the intersection of two growing trends: mapping fresh food markets in US cities, and private citizens creating online maps of local neighborhood features. According to Michael Goodchild, a geographer at the University of California at Santa Barbara, citizen map makers may make maps because there is no good government map, or to record problems such as burned-out traffic lights.
According to recent studies, people at higher risk of chronic disease and who receive minimal incomes for the work they do, frequently live in neighborhoods located in food deserts. But how did these food deserts arise? Linda Alwitt and Thomas Donley, marketing researchers at DePaul University in Chicago, found that supermarkets often can't afford the amount of land required for their stores in cities. City planning researcher Cliff Guy and colleagues at the University of Leeds in the UK found in 2004 that smaller urban groceries tend to close due to competition from suburban supermarkets.
As fresh food stores leave a neighborhood, residents find it harder to eat well and stay healthy. Food deserts are linked with lower local health outcomes, and they may be a driving force in the health disparities between lower-income and afluent people in the US. Until recently, the issue attracted little national attention, and received no ongoing funding for research.
Now, more cities are becoming aware of their food landscapes. Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture launched a map of where food stores are located in all the US counties. Mari Gallagher, who runs a private consulting firm, says her researchers have mapped food stores and related them to health statistics for the cities of Detroit, Chicago, Cincinnati and Washington, D.C. These maps help cities identify where food deserts are and, occasionally, have documented that people living in food deserts have higher rates of diet-related diseases.
The Brooklyn project differs in that it's run by a local core of five volunteers who have worked on the project for the past year, rather than trained, academic researchers. To gather data, they simply go to individual stores with pre-printed surveys in hand, and once the storekeeper's permission has been obtained, check off boxes on their list against the products for sale in the store. Their approach to data collection and research has been made possible by technologies such as mapping software and GPS-enabled smartphones, Google Maps and OpenStreetMap, an open-source online map with a history of involvement in social issues. Like the Brooklyn Food Association volunteers, many citizen online map makers use maps to bring local problems to official attention, Goodchild says. Heehs, the mapping project leader, says that after his group gathers more data, it will compare neighborhoods, come up with solutions to address local needs, and then present them to New York City officials.
Their website hasn't caught much local or official attention yet, however. It was launched only recently, but its creators haven't yet set up systems to see who's looking at it. Experts who visited the Brooklyn group's site were optimistic but cautious. "This kind of detailed information could be very useful," says Michele Ver Ploeg, an economist for the Department of Agriculture. To make the map more helpful to both residents and policy makers, she would like to see price data for healthy products, too. Karen Ansel, a registered dietician and a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, found the site confusing to navigate. "That said, with this information in place the group has the tools to build a more user-friendly site that could be... very helpful to consumers," she says. "The group also should ensure their map is available to those who don't have internet access at home," she adds. In fact, a significant proportion of Brooklyn residents don't have internet at home, and 8 percent rely on dial-up service, instead of high-speed internet access, according to Gretchen Maneval, director of Brooklyn College's Center for the Study of Brooklyn. "It's still very much a work in progress," Heehs says of the online map. They'll start advertising it online and by email to other community groups, such as urban food garden associations, next month. He also hopes warmer days in the spring will draw out fresh volunteers to spread awareness and to finish surveying, as they have about two-thirds of Brooklyn left to cover.
Clicking on a dot
will show you the store’s name + whether it carries fresh fruit [...] & other options
B. Now it is becoming clear that group decisions are also extremely valuable for the success of social animals, such as ants, bees, birds and dolphins. Bees make collective decisions, and they do it rather well, according to Christian List of the London School of Economics, who has studied group decision-making in humans and animals. Researchers led by Dr List looked at colonies once the original colony reaches a certain size. The queen goes off with about two-thirds of the worker bees to live in a new home or nest, leaving a daughter queen in the old nest with the remaining workers. Among the bees that depart are some that have searched for and found some new nest sites, and reported back using a characteristic body movement known as a ‘waggle dance’ to indicate to the other bees the suitable places they have located. The longer the dance, the better the site. After a while, other bees start to visit the sites signaled by their companions to see for themselves and, on their return, also perform more waggle dances. The process eventually leads to a consensus on the best site and the breakaway swarm migrates. The decision is remarkably reliable, with the bees choosing the best site even when there is only a small difference between alternative sites.
C. But exactly how do bees reach such a robust consensus? To find out, Dr List and his colleagues used a computer generated model of the decision-making process. By experimenting with it they found that, when bees in the model were very good at finding nesting sites but did not share their information, this dramatically slowed down the migration, leaving the swarm homeless and vulnerable. Conversely, bees in the model blindly following the waggle dances of others without first checking. The researchers concluded that the ability of bees to identify successfully and quickly the best site depends on both the bees 'interdependence' in communicating the whereabouts of the bees site, and their independence in confirming this information for themselves.
D. Another situation in which collective decisions are taken occurs when animals are either isolated from crucial sources of information or dominated by other members of the group. José Halloy of the Free University of Brussels in Belgium used robotic cockroaches to subvert the behaviour of living cockroaches and control their decision-making process. In his experiment, the artificial bugs were introduced to the live ones and soon became sufficiently socially integrated that they were perceived by the real cockroaches as equals. By manipulating the robots, which were in the minority, Halloy was able to persuade the living cockroaches to choose an inappropriate shelter - even one which they had rejected before being infiltrated by the robots.
E. The way insects put into effect collective decisions can be complex and as important as the decisions themselves. At the University of Bristol, in the UK, Nigel Franks and his colleagues studied how a species of ant establishes a new nest. Franks and his associates reported how the insects reduce the problems associated with making a necessarily swift choice. If the ants’ existing nest become suddenly threatened, the insects choose certain ants to act as scouts to find a new nest. How quickly they accomplish the transfer to a new home depends not only on how soon the best available site is found, but also on how quickly the migration there can be achieved.
F. Once the suitable new nest is identified, the chosen ants begin to lead others, which have made it to the new site or which may simply be in the vicinity, back to the original threatened nest. In this way, those ants which are familiar with the route can help transport, for example, the queen and young ants to the new site, and simultaneously show the way to those ants which have been left behind to guard the old nest. In this way moving processes are accomplished faster and more efficiently. Thus the dynamics of collective decision-making are closely related to the efficient implementation of those decisions. How this might apply to choices that humans make is, as yet, unclear. But it does suggest, even for humans, the importance of recruiting dynamic leaders to a cause, because the most important thing about collective decision-making, as shown by these insect experiments, is to get others to follow.
You arrive at the office, review your to-do list and start to feel a headache coming on. You resolve to tackle the items as quickly as possible. While you return calls, you sort email and other letters. You begin keying in slides for tomorrow's presentation. Then your manager comes in wanting an immediate update on sales figures. You have just opened the spreadsheet when a very important customer calls. With the receiver held between your shoulder and your ear, you continue adding up the sales totals until, 15 minutes later, you finally manage, politely, to get rid of the client. You've been multitasking again.
You may believe that anyone who wants to get ahead today should master the art of multitasking. However, a recent study by the Families and Work Institute in New York City has found that 45 per cent of US workers believe that they are asked or expected to work on too many tasks at once. Managers may be surprised to learn that they are actually wasting their workers' time. As it turns out, the human brain cannot really master the computer's art of crunching data in the background while moving between process windows. Instead, a growing number of studies show that trying to juggle jobs rather than completing them sequentially can take longer, and leave workers with a reduced ability to perform each task. In addition, the stress associated with multitasking may contribute to short-term memory difficulties. The combination results in inefficiency, careless thinking and mistakes – not to mention the possible dangers of divided attention for drivers, air traffic controllers, and others who handle machinery.
How can a time management strategy that has become part of the common wisdom actually be so wrong? Exploring that question requires a closer look at an area of consciousness research that examines how the brain focuses attention. One of the modern foundations of current knowledge of multitasking was laid in 1935, when the American – psychologist John Ridley Stroop reported that processing information from one task could cause interference with another. Stroop noticed that when study participants were asked to name the colour of a word – such as 'green' – printed in a different colour – red, for example they experienced difficulty saying the name of the colour. This phenomenon is thought to occur when two tasks get tangled: the brain must suppress one that has been learned so well that it has become automatic (reading), to attend to a second task that requires concentration (naming the colour).
During the past couple of decades, psychologists have probed more deeply into the nature and limitations of multitasking. Psychologist and brain researcher Ernst Pöppel, of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, believes that it is impossible to carry out two or three different tasks simultaneously with the same degree of concentration. He says that seemingly simultaneous awareness and processing of information actually takes place in 'three-second windows'. In these three-second segments, the brain takes in, as a block, all the data about the environment streaming in from the sensory systems; subsequent events are processed in the next window. So a person can concentrate on a conversation for three seconds, then for three seconds on a crying child, and three seconds on a computer screen. While one subject at a time occupies the foreground of consciousness, the others stay in the background until they, in turn, are given access to the central processor.
Another experiment by psychologist David E Meyer, of the University of Michigan, quantified just how much time we can lose when we shuttle between tasks. The researchers asked test participants to write a report and check their email at the same time. Those individuals who constantly jumped back and forth between the two tasks took about one and a half times as long to finish as those who completed one job before turning to the other. Each switchover from one task to another meant rethinking, and thus involved additional neural resources. In effect, the brain needs time to shut off the rules for one task and to turn on the rules for another. 'Multitasking saves time only when it is a matter of relaxed, routine tasks,' Meyer says. It also takes the brain longer to adapt when switching rapidly back to an interrupted task, rather than waiting longer before switching back.
By its nature multitasking is stressful, and the area in the brain most involved with multitasking is also most affected by the resulting stress. Located behind the forehead, the prefrontal cortex, which neuroscientists call the 'executive' part of the brain, helps us to assess tasks, prioritise them and assign mental resources. It also 'marks' the spot at which a task has been interrupted, so that we can return to it later. This stress can also affect brain cells in another region, the hippocampus, which is important for forming new memories; damage in that area also makes it difficult for a person to acquire new skills.
Psychiatrists Edward Halliwell and John Ratey, of Harvard University, say that multitasking can bring about a brain condition that causes sufferers to constantly seek new information while having difficulties concentrating on its content. All in all, it may be wise to let the email wait while you work on your presentation. You will save time and perform each task better.
