Tickling and Laughter

A. The fingers of an outstretched aim are nearing your body; you bend away folding your torso,
bending your head to your shoulder in hopes that you don’t get tickled; but the inevitable occurs:
yon arc tickled and in hysterics you chuckle, titter, and burst into uncontrollable laughter. Why do
we laugh when we are tickled?

B. Tickling is caused by a light sensation across our skin. At times the light sensation can cause
itching; however, most of the time it causes giggling. If a feather is gently moved across the
surface of the skin, it can also cause tickling and giggling. Heavy laughter is caused by someone
or something placing repeated pressure on a person and tickling a particular area. The spots
tickled often are feet, toes, sides, underarms, and neck which cause a great deal of laughter.
Yngve Zotterman from Karolinksk Institute has found that tickling sensations involve signals from
nerve fibers. These nerve fibers are associated with pain and touch. Also, Zotterman has
discovered tickling sensations to be associated not only with nerve fibers but also with sense of
touch because people who have lost pain sensations still laugh when tickled. But really, why do
we laugh? Why are we not able to tickle ourselves? What part of the brain is responsible for
laughter and humor? Why do we say some people have no sense of humor?

C. Research has shown that laugher is more than just a person’s voice and movement and that it
requires the coordination of many muscles throughout the body. Laughter also increases blood
pressure and heart rate, changes breathing, reduces levels of certain neurochemicals (catecholamines,
hormones) and provides a boost to die immune system. Can laughter improve health? It may be a good
way for people to relax because muscle tension is reduced after laughing. Human tests have found
some evidence that humorous videos and tapes can reduce feelings of pain, prevent negative stress
reactions and boost the brain’s biological battle against infection.

D. Researchers believe we process humor and laughter through a complex pathway of brain
activity that encompasses three main brain components. In one new study, researchers used
imaging equipment to photograph die brain activity of healthy volunteers while they underwent a
sidesplitting assignment of reading written jokes, viewing cartoons from The New Yorker
magazine as well as “The Far Side” and listening to digital recordings of laughter. Preliminary
results indicate that the humor-processing pathway includes parts of the frontal lobe brain area,
important for cognitive processing the supplementary motor area, important for movement; and
the nucleus accumbens, associated with pleasure. Investigations support the notion that parts of
the frontal lobe are involved in humor. Subjects’ brains were imaged while they were listening to
jokes. An area of the frontal lobe was activated only when they thought a joke was funny. In a
study that compared healthy individuals with people who had damage to their frontal lobes, the
subjects with damaged frontal lobes were more likely to choose wrong punch lines to written
jokes and didn’t laugh or smile as much at funny cartoons or jokes.

E. Even though we may know more about what parts of the brain are responsible for humor, it is still
hard to explain why we don’t laugh or giggle when we tickle ourselves. Darwin theorized within “The
Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals” that there was a link between tickling and laughter
because of the anticipation of pleasure. Because we cannot tickle ourselves and have caused laughter,
Darwin speculated surprise from another person touching a sensitive spot must have caused laughter.
Some scientists believe that laughing caused by tickling is a built-in reflex even babies have. If we tickle
ourselves in the same spot as our friend tickled us, we do not laugh as we did previously. The
information sent to our spinal cord and brain should be exactly the same. Apparently for tickling to
work, the brain needs tension and surprise. When we tickle ourself, we know exactly what will happen…
there is no tension or surprise. How the brain uses this information about tension and surprise is still a
mystery, but there is some evidence that the cerebellum may be involved. Because one part of the
brain tells another: “It’s just you. Don’t get excited”. Investigations suggest that during self-tickling, the
cerebellum tells an area called the somatosensory cortex what sensation to expect, and that dampens
the tickling sensation. It looks as if the killjoy is found in the cerebellum. Further explorations to
understand tickling and laughter were conducted by Christenfeld and Harris. Within ‘The Mystery of
Ticklish Laughter and “Can a Machine Tickleyn they explained that people laughed equally whether
tickled by a machine or by a person. The participants were not
aware that who or what was tickling them. However, the laughter was equally resounded. It is
suggested that tickling response is a reflex, which, like Darwin suggested earlier, is dependent on
the element of surprise.

F. Damage to any one part of the brain may affect one’s overall ability to process humor. Peter
Derks, a professor of psychology, conducted his research with a group of scientists at NASA-
Langley in Hampton. Using a sophisticated electroencephalogram (EEG), they measured the brain
activity of 10 people exposed to humorous stimuli. How quickly our brain recognizes the
incongruity that deals with most humor and attaches an abstract meaning to it determines
whether we laugh. However, different people find different jokes funny. That can be due to a
number of factors, including differences in personality, intelligence, mental state and probably
mood. But according to Derks, the majority of people recognize when a situation is meant to be
humorous. In a series of experiments, he noticed that several patients recovering from brain
injuries could not distinguish between something funny and something not.

G. Dr. Shibata of the University of Rochester School of Medicine said our neurons get tickled when
we hear a joke. The brain’s ‘Tunny bone” is located at the right frontal lobe just above the right
eye and appears critical to our ability to recognize a joke. Dr. Shibata gave his patients MRI scans
to measure brain activity, trying to find out what part of the brain is particularly active while
telling the punch line of a joke as opposed to the rest of the joke and funny cartoons in
comparison to parts of the cartoons that arc not funny. The jokes “tickled” the frontal lobes. The
scans also showed activity in the nucleus accumbens, which is likely related to our feeling of mirth
after hearing a good joke and our “addiction” to humor. While his research was about humor, the
results could help lead to answers and solutions to depression. Parts of the brain that are active
during humor are actually abnormal in patients with depression. Eventually brain scans might be
used to assess patients with depression and other mood disorders. The research may also explain
why some stroke victims lose their sense of humor or suffer from other personality changes. The
same part of the brain is also associated with social and emotional judgment and planning.

Question 1-7
Reading Passage 1 has 7 paragraphs A-G. Which paragraph contains the following
information? NB you may use any letter more than once

1. Location of a brain section essential to the recognition of jokes

2. Laughter enhances immunity
3. Individual differences and the appreciation of humour
4. Parts of the brain responsible for tickling reflex
5. Neuropsychological mechanisms by which humor and laughter work
6. The connection between tickling and nerve fibers
7. Patients with emotional disorders
Questions 8-11
Look at the following researchers (listed 8-11) and findings (listed A-F). Match each researcher
with the correct finding(s).

A The surprise factor, combined with the anticipation of pleasure, cause laughter when tickled.
B Laughing caused by tickling is a built-in reflex even babies have.
C People also laugh when tickled by a machine if they are not aware of it.
D People have different tastes for jokes and humour.
E Jokes and funny cartoons activates the frontal lobes.
F Tickling sensations involve more than nerve fibers.

8. Darwin
9. Christenfeld and Harris
10.Ygve Zotterman
11.Peter Derks

Questions 12-14

Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each
blank.
Write your answers in boxes 12-14 on your answer sheet.

Researchers believe three brain components to be involved in the processing of humor and laughter
Results from one study using brain (12)……………………indicate that parts of the brain responsible for
(13)……………..……
movement and pleasure are involved through a sophisticated pathway. Test subjects who
suffered from frontal lobes damages had greater chances of picking (14)…………..……..of jokes or
did not respond to funny cartoons
or jokes.
 The Farmer! Parade of history

A. History of Farmer trading company: In 1909 Robert Laidlaw establishes mail-order company
Laidlaw Leeds in Fort Street, Auckland. Then, Branch expansion: purchase of Green and Colebrook
chain store; further provincial stores in Auckland and Waikato to follow. Opening of first furniture
and boot factory. In 1920, Company now has 29 branches; Whangarei store purchased. Doors
open at Hobson Street for direct selling to public. Firm establishes London and New York buying
offices. With permission from the Harbour Board, the large FARMERS electric sign on the
Wyndham Street frontage is erected.

B. In 1935, if the merchandise has changed, the language of the catalogues hasn’t Robert
Laidlaw, the Scottish immigrant who established the century-old business, might have been
scripting a modern-day television commercial when he told his earliest customers: Satisfaction, or
your money back. “It was the first money back guarantee ever offered in New Zealand by any
firm,” says Ian Hunter, business historian. “And his mission statement was, potentially, only the
second one ever found in the world.” Laidlaw’s stated aims were simple to build the greatest
business in New Zealand, to simplify every transaction, to eliminate all delays, to only sell goods
it would pay the customer to buy.

C. This year, the company that began as a mail-order business and now employs 3500 staff
across 58 stores turns 100. Its centenary will be celebrated with the release of a book and major
community fundraising projects, to be announced next week. Hunter, who is writing the
centenary history, says “coming to a Farmers store once a week was a part of the New Zealand
way of life”. By 1960, one in every 10 people had an account with the company. It was the place
where teenage girls shopped for their first bra, where newlyweds purchased their first dinner sets,
where first pay cheques were used to pay off hire purchase furniture, where Santa paraded every
Christmas.

D. Gary Blumenthal’s mother shopped there, and so does he. The fondest memory for the
Rotorua resident? “We were on holiday in Auckland … I decided that up on the lookout tower on
top of the Farmers building would be a unique place to fit the ring on my new fiancee’s finger.”
The lovebirds, who had to wait for “an annoying youth” to leave the tower before they could
enjoy their engagement kiss, celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in June.

E. Farmers, says Hunter, has always had a heart. This, from a 1993 North & South interview with
a former board chairman, Rawdon Busfield: “One day I was in the Hobson Street shop and I saw a
woman with two small children. They were clean and tidily dressed, but poor, you could tell. That
week we had a special on a big bar of chocolate for one shilling. I heard the woman say to her
boy, ‘no, your penny won’t buy that’. He wasn’t wearing shoes. So I went up to the boy said,’ Son,
have you got your penny? ‘He handed it to me. It was hot he’d had it in his hand for hours. I took
the penny and gave him the chocolate.”

F. Farmers was once the home of genteel tearooms, children’s playgrounds and an annual sale of
celebration for birthday of Hector the Parrot (the store mascot died, aged 131, in the 1970s his
stuffed remains still occupy pride of place at the company’s head office). You could buy houses
from Farmers. Its saddle factory supplied the armed forces, and its upright grand overstrung
pianos offered “the acme of value” according to those early catalogues hand-drawn by Robert
Laidlaw himself. Walk through a Farmers store today and get hit by bright lights and big brands.
Its Albany branch houses 16 international cosmetics companies. It buys from approximately 500
suppliers, and about 30% of those are locally owned.

G. “Eight, 10 years ago,” says current chief executive Rod McDermott, “lots of brands wouldn’t
partner with us. The stores were quite distressed. We were first price point focused, we weren’t
fashion focused. “Remove the rose-tinted nostalgia, and Farmers is, quite simply, a business,
doing business in hard times. Dancing with the Stars presenter Candy Lane launches a clothing
line? “We put a trial on, and we thought it was really lovely, but the uptake wasn’t what we
thought it would be. It’s got to be what the customer wants,” says McDermott.
H. He acknowledges retailers suffer in a recession: “We’re celebrating 100 years because we can
and because we should.” Farmers almost didn’t pull through one economic crisis. By the mid
1980s, it had stores across the country. It had acquired the South Island’s Calder Mackay chain of
stores and bought out Haywrights. Then, with sales topping $375 million, it was taken over by
Chase Corporation. Lincoln Laidlaw, now aged 88, and the son of the company’s founder,
remembers the dark days following the stock market crash and the collapse of Chase. “I think,
once, Farmers was like a big family and all of the people who worked for it felt they were building
something which would ultimately be to their benefit and to the benefit of New Zealand… then
the business was being divided up and so that kind of family situation was dispelled and it hasn’t
been recovered.” For a turbulent few years, the stores were controlled, first by a consortium of
Australian banks and later Deka, the Maori Development Corporation and Foodland Associated
Ltd. In 2003, it went back to “family” ownership, with the purchase by the James Pascoe Group,
owned by David and Anne Norman the latter being the great-granddaughter of James Pascoe,
whose first business interest was jewellery.

I. “Sheer power of the brand,” says McDermott, “pulled Farmers through and now we’re
becoming the brand it used to be again.” Farmers was the company that, during World War n,
topped up the wages of any staff member disadvantaged by overseas service. Robert Laidlaw a
committed Christian who came to his faith at a 1902 evangelistic service in Dunedin concluded
his original mission statement with the words, “all at it, always at it, wins success”. Next week, 58
Farmers stores across the country will announce the local charities they will raise funds for in
their centenary celebration everything from guide dog services to hospices to volunteer fire
brigades will benefit. Every dollar raised by the community will be matched by the company. “It’s
like the rebirth of an icon,” says McDermott.

Questions 15-18
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-I. Which paragraph contains the following
information?

15.Innovation of offer made by the head of company.

16.Fashion was not its strong point.
17.A romantic event on the roof of farmers.
18.Farmers was sold to a private owned company.

Questions 19-23
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage* using no more than
two words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 19-23 on
your answer sheet.

19.Farmers was first founded as a____________in Auckland by Mr. Laidlaw.

20.Farmers developed fast and bought one____________then.
21.During oversea expansion, Farmers set up____________in cities such as London.
22.Farmers held a______________once a year for the well-known parrot.
23. In the opinion of Lincoln Laidlaw, Farmers is like a ______for employees, not just for themselves
but for the whole country.

Questions 24-26
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-C) with opinions or deeds below.
Write the appropriate letters A-C in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet. NB you may use any letter
more than once

A Lincoln Laidlaw
B Rod McDermott
C Ian Hunter

24 Product became worse as wrong aspect focused.

25 An unprecedented statement made by Farmers in New Zealand.
26 Character of the company was changed.
 John Franklin: “the discovery of the slowness”

A. John Franklin (1786-1847) was the most famous vanisher of the Victorian era. He joined the Navy as
a midshipman at the age of 14, and fought in the battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar. When peace
with the French broke out. he turned his attention to, and in particular to solving the conundrum of the
Northwest Passage, the mythical clear-water route which would, if it existed, link the Atlantic and the
Pacific Oceans above the northern coast of the American continent. The first expedition Franklin led to
the Arctic was an arduous overland journey from Hudson Bay to the shores of the so-called Polar Ocean
east of the Coppermine River. Between 1819 and 1822. Franklin and his twenty-strong team covered
5550 miles on foot. Their expedition was a triumph of surveying – they managed to chart hundreds of
miles of previously unknown coastline.

B. There followed a career as a travel writer and salon-goer (the man who ate his boots’ was
Franklin’s tag-line), a second long Arctic expedition, and a controversial spell as Governor of Van
Diemen’s Land. Then, in May 1845, Franklin set off with two ships – the Erebus and the Terror –
and 129 men on the voyage that would kill him. In July, the convoy was seen by two whalers,
entering Lancaster Sound. Nothing more would be heard of it for 14 years. Had the ships sunk or
been iced in? Were the men dead, or in need of rescue? Or had they broken through to the
legendary open polar sea, beyond the ‘ice barrier’?

C. In his personal correspondence and in his published memoirs. Franklin comes across as a man
dedicated to the external duties of war and exploration, who kept introspection and self-analysis
to a minimum. His blandness makes him an amenably malleable subject for a novelist, and Sten
Nadolny has taken full advantage of this licence. Most important, he has endowed his John
Franklin with a defining character trait for which there is no historical evidence: (‘slowness’, or
‘calmness’).

D. Slowness influences not only Franklin’s behaviour, but also his vision, his thought and his
speech. The opening scene of The Discovery of Slowness (The Discovery of Slowness by Sten
Nadolny) – depicts Franklin as a young boy. playing catch badly because his reaction time is too
slow. Despite the bullying of his peers, Franklin resolves not to fall into step with ‘their way of
doing things’. For Nadolny. Franklin’s fated fascination with the Arctic stems from his desire to
find an environment suited to his peculiar slowness.

E. He describes Fremklin as a boy dreaming of the ‘open water euid the time without hours and
days’ which exist in the far north, and of finding in the Arctic a place ‘where nobody would find
him too slow’. Ice is a slow mover. Ice demands a corresponding patience from those who venture
onto it. The explorers who have thrived at high latitude and at high altitudes haven’t usually been
men of great speed. They have tended instead to demonstrate unusual self-possession, a
considerable capacity for boredom, and a talent for what the Scots call ‘tholing’, the
uncomplaining endurance of suffering.

F. These were all qualities which the historical Franklin possessed in abundance, and so Nadolny’s
concentration and exaggeration of them isn’t unreasonable. Even as an adult, his slowness of thought
means that he is unable to speak fluently, so he memorises ‘entire fleets of words and batteries of
response’, and speaks a languid, bric-a-brac language. In the Navy, his method of thinking first and
acting later initially provokes mockery from his fellow sailors. But Franklin persists in doing things his
way. and gradually earns the respect of those around him. To a commodore who tells him to speed up
his report of an engagement, he replies: ‘When I tell something, sir. I use my own rhythm.’ A lieutenant
says approvingly of him: ’Because Franklin is so slow, he never loses time.’

G. Since it was first published in Germany in 1983. The Discovery of Slowness has sold more than a
million copies and been translated into 13 languages. It has been named as one of German literature’s
twenty ‘contemporary classics’, and it has been as a manual and by European pressure groups and
institutions representing causes as diverse as sustainable development, the Protestant Church,
management science, motoring policy and pacifiam.

H. The various groups that have taken the novel up have one thing in common: a dislike of the high-
speed culture of Postmodernity. Nadolny’s Franklin appeals to them because he is immune to ‘the
compulsion to be constantly occupied’, and to the idea that ‘someone was better if he could do the
same thing fast.’ Several German
churches have used him in their and focus groups as an example of peacefulness, piety and self-
confidence. A centre scheme (a ‘march of slowness’ or ‘of the slow’), inspired by the novel.
Nadolny has appeared as a guest speaker for RIO. a Lucerne-based organisation which aims to
reconcile management principles with ideas of environmental sustainability. The novel has even
become involved in the debate about speed limits on German roads. Drive down an autobahn
today, and you will see large road-side signs proclaiming ‘unhurriedness’ a slogan which
deliberately plays off the title of the novel.

I. A management journal in the US described The Discovery of Slowness as a ‘major event not
only for connoisseurs of fine historical fiction, but also for those of us who concern themselves
with leadership, communication and systems-thinking, issues’. It’s easy to see where the
attraction lies for the management crowd. The novel is crammed with quotations about time-
efficiency, punctiliousness and profitability: ‘As a rule, there are always three points in time: the
right one. the lost one and the premature one’. ‘What did too late mean? They hadn’t waited for it
long enough, that’s what it meant.’

Questions 27-32
Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs A-H. Which paragraph contains the following
information? Write the correct letter A-H, in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet. NB You may use
any letter more than once.

27.What was Sir John Franklin’s occupation before he went on career of the arctic exploration?
28.A story John Franklin reacted strangely when he met bullies by other children.
29.Reason of popularity for the book The Discovery of Slowness
30.A depiction that Sten Nadolny’s biography on John Franklin is not much based on facts.
31.The particular career Sir John Franklin took after his expedition unmatched before.
32.What is the central scheme and environment conveyed by the book The Discovery of Slowness

Questions 33-36
Complete the Summary paragraph described below. In boxes 33-36 on your answer sheet,
write the correct answer with one word chosen from the box below

In his personal correspondence to and in his published memoirs by Sten Nadolny, John Franklin was
depicted as a man dedicated to the exploration, and the word of “slowness” was used to define his (33)
………………..…….when
Franklin was in his childhood, his determination to the (34)…………………..………of the schoolboys
was too slow
for him to fall into step. And Franklin was said to be a boy dreaming finding in a place he could
enjoy the (35)………………………in the Arctic. Later in 20th, His biography of discovery of slowness
has been adopted as a
(36)………………………. as for the movement such as sustainable development, or management science,
motoring
policy.

A exploration B blandness C personality D policy

E pressure F guidebook G management H timelessness
I sports J bully K evidence
Questions 37-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

37.Why does the author mention “the ice is a slow in the geological arctic, to demonstrate the idea
A. of the difficulties Franklin conquered
B. that Franklin had a dream since his
childhood C. of fascination with the Arctic
exploration
D. that explorer like Franklin should possess the quality of being patient

38.When Franklin was on board with sailors, how did he speak to his follow sailors
A. he spoke in a way mocking his followers
B. he spoke a bric-a-brac language to show his languish attitude
C. he spoke in the words and phrases he previously memorized
D. he spoke in a rhythmical tune to save chatting time

39. His effort to overcome his slowness in marine time life had
finally won the A. understanding of his personality better
B. capacity for coping with boredom
C. respect for him as he insisted to overcome his
difficulties D. valuable time he can use to finish a
report

40. Why is the book The Discovery of Slowness sold more than a
million copies A. it contains aspects of the life people would like to
enjoy
B. it contains the information for the flag language applied
in ships C. it induces a debate about speed limits German
D. it contains the technique for symposia German churches