CAT Reading Comprehension

Reading Test 2

The passages given below are followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best capure the essence of the passage.

Question No : 1

Q.1 Manipulating information was a feature of history long before modern journalism established rules of integrity. A record dates back to ancient Rome, when Antony met Cleopatra and his political enemy Octavian launched a smear campaign against him with "short, sharp slogans written upon coins." The perpetrator became the first Roman Emperor and "fake news had allowed Octavian to hack the republican system once and for all." But the 21st century has seen the weaponization of information on an unprecedented scale. Powerful new technology makes the fabrication of content simple, and social networks amplify falsehoods peddled by States, populist politicians, and dishonest corporate entities. The platforms have become fertile grounds for computational propaganda, 'trolling' and 'troll armies'.

Question No : 2

Q.2 People spontaneously create counterfactual alternatives to reality when they think "if only" or "what if" and imagine how the past could have been different. The mind computes counterfactuals for many reasons. Counterfactuals explain the past and prepare for the future, they implicate various relations including causal ones, and they affect intentions and decisions. They modulate emotions such as regret and relief, and they support moral judgements such as blame. The ability to create counterfactuals develips throughout childhood and contributes to reasoning about other people's beliefs, inclding their false beliefs.

Question No : 3

Q.3 The weight of society's expectations is hardly a new phenomenon but it has become particularly draining over recent decades, perhaps because expectations themselves are so multifarious and contradictory. The perfectionism of the 1950s was rooted in the norms of mass culture and captured in famous advertising images of the ideal white American family that now seems self-satirising. In that era, perfectionism meant seamlessly conforming to values, behaviour and appearance: chiselled confidence for men, demure graciousness for women. The perfectionist was under pressure to look like everyone else, only more so. The perfectionists of today, by contrast, feel an obligation to stand out through their idiosyncratic style and wit if they are to gain a foothold in the attention economy.

Question No : 4

Q.4 Colonialism is not a modern phenomenon. World history is full of examples of one society gradually expanding by incorporating adjacent territory and settling its people on newly conquered territory. In the sixteenth century, colonialism changed decisively because of technological developments in navigation that began to connect more remote parts of the world. The modern European colonial project emrged when it became possible to move large numbers of people across the ocean and to maintain political control in spite of geographical dispersion. The term colonialism is used to describe the process of European settlement, violent dispossession and political domination over the rest of the world, including the Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia.

Question No : 5

Q.5 Heatwaves are becoming longer, frequent and intense due to climate change. The impacts of extreme heat are unvenly experienced; with older people and young children, those with pre-existing medical conditions and on low incomes significantly more vulnerabe. Adaptation to heatwaves is a significant public policy concern. Research conductd among at-risk people in the UK reveals that even vulnerable people do not perceive themselves as at risk of extreme heat; therefore, early warnings of extreme heat events do not perform as intended. This suggests that understanding how extreme at is narrated is very important. The news media play a central role in this process and can help warn people about the potential danger, as well as about impacts on infrastructure and society.

Question No : 6

Q.6 Gradually, life for the island's birds is improving. Antartic prions and white-headed petrels, which also nest in burrows, had managed to cling on in some sites while pests were on the island. Their numbers are now increasing. "It's fascinating and so exciting," Shaw says. As birds return to breed, tey also poop. This adds nutrients to the soil, which in turn helps the plants to grow back stronger. Tall plants then help burrowing birds hide from predatory skuas. "It's this wonderful feedback loop," Shaw says. Today, the "pretty paddock" that Houghton first experienced has been transformed. "Thetussock is over your head, and you're dodging all these penguin tunnels," she says. The orchids and tiny herb that had been protected by fencing have started turning up all over the place.

Question No : 7

Q.7 Tamsin Blanchard, curator of Fashion Open Studio, an initiative by a campaign group showcasing the work of ethical designers says, "We're all drawn to an exquisit piece of embroidery, a colourful textile or even a style of dressing that might have originated from another heritage. [But] this magpie mentality, where all of culture and history is up for grabs as 'inspiration', has accelerated since the proliferation of social media...Where once a fashion student might research history and traditions of a particular item of clothing with care and respect, we now have a world where images are lifted from image libraries without care for their cultural significance. It's easier than ever to steal a motif or a craft techinque and transfer it on to a piece of clothing that is either mass produced or appears on a runaway without credit or compensation to the original communities."

Question No : 8

Q.8 Petitioning is an expeditious democratic tradition, used frequent in prior centuries, by which citizens can bring issues directly to governments. As expressions of collective voice, they support procedural democracy by shaping agendas. They can also recruit citizens to causs, give voice to votless, and apply the discipline of rhetorical argument that clarifies a point of view. By contrast, elections are limited in several respects: they involve only a few candidats, and thus fall far short of a representative democracy. Further, voters' choices are not specified to particular policies or laws, and elections are episodic, whereas the voice of the people needs to be heard and integrated constantly into democratic government.

Question No : 9

Q.9 It's not that modern historians of medieval Africa have been ignorant about contacts between Ethiopia and Europe; they just had the power dynamic reversed. The traditional narrative stressed Ethiopia as weak and in trouble in the face of aggression from external forces, so Ethiopia sought military assistance from their fellow Christians to the north. But the real story, buried in plain sight in medieval diplomatic texts, simply had not yet been put together by modern scholars. Recent research pushes scholars of medieval Europe to imagine a much more richly connected medival world: at the beginning of the so-called Age of Exploration, there is evidence that the kings of Ethiopia were sponsoring their own missions of diplomacy, faith and commerce.

Question No : 10

Q.10 To defend the sequence of alphabetisation may seem bizarre, so obvious is its application that it is hard to imagine a reference, catalogue or listing without it. But alphabetical order was not an immediate consequence of the alphabet itself. In the Middle Ages, deference for ecclesiastical tradition left scholars reluctant to catgorise things according to the alphabet - to do so would be a rejection of divie order. The rediscovery of the ancient Greek and Roman classics necessitated more efficienct ways of ordering, searching and referencing texts. Governmnt bureaucracy in the 16th and 17th centuries quickened the advance of alphabetical order, bringging with it pigeonholes, notebooks and card indexes.

Question No : 11

Q.11 There is a common idea that museum artworks are somehow timeless objects available to admire for generations to come. But many are object of decay. Even the most venerable Old Master paintings don't escape: pigmnts discolour, varnishes crack, canvases wrap. This challenging fact of art-world life is down to something that sounds more like a thread from a morality tale: inherent vice. Damien Hirst's iconic shark floating in a tank - entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mid of Someone Living - is a work that put a spotlight on inherent vice. When he made it in 1991, Hirst got himself in a pickle by not using the right kin of pickle to preserve the giant fish. The result was that the shark began to decompose quite quickly - its preserving liquid clouding, the skn wrinkling, and an unpleasant smell wafting from the tank.

SubQuestion No : 12

Please refer to Reading Comprehension 3

Q.12 According to the passage, government servants are

I. fishes and birds.

II. fish and poison.

III. birds and poison.

SubQuestion No : 13

Please refer to Reading Comprehension 3

Q.13 According to the author, vigilance is the duty of:

SubQuestion No : 14

Please refer Reading Comprehension 3

Q.14 It can be inferred from the passage that

SubQuestion No : 15

Please refer to Reading Comprehension 3

Q.15 According to the passage, all of the following are not true, except:

SubQuestion No : 16

Please refer to Reading Comprehension 3

Q.16 According to the passage, the term “the institution” refers to

I. CVC

II. CVO

III. CBI