List of Use context to identify the meaning of a word

Let’s practice!

Read the passage and then answer the question.

Do human beings have the freedom to make their own choices, to act out of their own free will, or are all choices, in some sense, predetermined by prior causes and physical laws? In 2007, neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes sought to answer this question by conducting an experiment: volunteer subjects were seated in a brain scanner and were asked to press a button with their left or right index fingers whenever they felt the urge. Haynes’s team scrutinised the subjects’ brain activity in real time, carefully monitoring the results and searching for patterns.

The results were surprising. The team discovered that they could observe a pattern of brain activity that would allow them to predict a subject’s decision to press a button up to seven seconds before the subject actually reported making his or her decision. This prediction process was accurate sixty percent of the time.

While some scientists have discounted this study for relying on an oversimplified decision-making process, these results have given other scientists hope. Perhaps, in the future, scientists will be able to accurately predict the results of even more complicated decision-making processes. In the meantime, the question looms: if our choices can be predicted before we even make them, then do we really have the freedom to choose?

 

Results

#1. What is the meaning of scrutinised as used in the passage?

made a guess about

looked at quickly

examined closely

thought highly of

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