Reading Comprehension
Cloze Test
Think you're good at reading people's expressions? Well, think again.New software is ten per cent better at it than the average person.There's even a device to improve your emotional intelligence.
Every time you interact with people, you 1 unconscious signals that you're following what they're saying. 2 , you might nod to show that you're following or squint(眯眼看)a bit to show that you've lost track.However, we're not very good at interpreting these signals. 3 we only get it right about half of the time.
Now social X-ray glasses can help you 4 some of these signals better by means of a built-in camera 5 to software which 6 facial expressions.The six basic 7 facial states it recognizes are:thinking, agreeing, concentrating, interested, confused and disagreeing.The device can read 24 'feature points' on a face and 8 which of these six general facial states is being 9 .You get the information via an earpiece, which tells you how the listener is responding.There's also a traffic light system displayed on the lens with a red, amber(yellowishbrown)or green light to show that the listener is interested, 10 interested or not interested.If it shows red, it's time to shut up!
The other novelty(something new)is sociometric badges.These are 11 to provide feedback on how often you're speaking, for how long and who with.Each person is represented by a dot, which is larger if you're talkative and smaller if not.If you speak in a monologue the dot will turn red, but if it's a dialogue it turns white.The interaction between speakers is represented by lines between them, so a thick line if two people speak a lot to each other and very thin if they 12 speak.The information is sent wirelessly to any device that can display it graphically.In one experiment, 13 some of the speakers started with very different dots, by the end of the experiment all the dots were more or less the same size and color, 14 that people had changed their behavior and made the interaction more even.
Think how differently our interactions with people could be if we could read their 15 to what we're saying with x-ray specs and track how well we work as a group with a sociometric badge! It's early days, but these devices may well transform how we interact with each other in the future.
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