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Part 7 · Exercise 2 — The science of laughter
C1 Advanced · Reading & Use of English
6 questions · 15 minutes
Part 7 · Gapped text
You are going to read an article about the science of laughter. Six paragraphs have been removed from the article. Choose from the paragraphs A–G the one which fits each gap (1–6). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.
THE SCIENCE OF LAUGHTER
Laughter is one of the most familiar of human sounds, and one of the strangest. We do it from infancy, in every culture on earth, often without deciding to — and yet, until surprisingly recently, science paid it almost no attention.
1
The first surprise is that laughter has very little to do with jokes. When researchers eavesdropped on thousands of everyday conversations, carefully noting exactly when people laughed, they found that most laughter followed remarks that were not remotely funny — an ordinary 'I know, right?' or 'See you later.'
2
This social function shows itself in a simple, telling statistic: we are some thirty times more likely to laugh in the presence of other people than when we are alone. Laughter, in other words, is less a response to the world than a message to those around us.
3
Anyone who has struggled to keep a straight face while others dissolve into giggles knows the power of this contagion. It is also why comedians and television producers have long relied on the 'laugh track', hoping that recorded laughter will set off the real thing in the viewer at home.
4
Brain scans reveal that these two sorts of laughter are processed differently, and that listeners can distinguish them within a fraction of a second. Real laughter, produced involuntarily, has a rougher, more irregular sound that a forced imitation cannot quite reproduce.
5
Chimpanzees, gorillas and other apes make panting, laughter-like sounds when they play and are tickled, and rats emit high-pitched chirps during rough-and-tumble games. Such findings suggest that the ancestor of human laughter was a signal of harmless play, a way of saying 'this is only pretend'.
6
Studies link a good laugh to lower levels of stress hormones, a stronger immune response and reduced sensitivity to pain. What began, it seems, as a grunt of playfulness among our distant ancestors has become one of the quiet pillars of human health and happiness.
Removed sentences
A The kind of thing that makes us laugh, of course, changes as we grow: the game of peekaboo that delights a baby would only embarrass a teenager, and much adult humour turns on an irony that a young child cannot yet grasp.
B That neglect has at last begun to change. Over the past few decades, a small band of researchers has started to treat laughter as a serious subject, and what they are uncovering overturns much of what we thought we knew.
C And it is a message we find almost impossible to resist. Few things are as catching as the sound of genuine mirth.
D Perhaps this is because laughter is far older than our species. Its roots reach deep into our evolutionary past.
E Our ears, however, are not so easily fooled. The brain, it turns out, is remarkably good at telling spontaneous laughter from the polite, deliberate kind.
F The explanation, it seems, lies not in humour but in company. We laugh, above all, to bond with the people we are with.
G That ancient reassurance may help to explain why laughter still does us so much good. Its benefits, it turns out, are not merely social.
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The science of laughter — CAE Reading Part 7 answers