Ejercicio B · Inglés PAU Madrid Extraordinaria (2ª lengua) 2021

TEXTO B

Are Humans Social Creatures?

Neil Ansell had always dreamt of living alone surrounded by nature, yet he became a hermit entirely by accident. Back in the 1980s, he was living in London with 20 other people. Then someone made him an offer he couldn't refuse: a lovely cottage lost in the mountains, with a minimum rent. This was a place so wild, the night sky was a continuous carpet of stars — and the neighbours were a pair of ravens, who had lived in the same tree for 20 years. The negative thing was that the scenic views came with extreme isolation. He lived on a hill farm, miles from the nearest village. He didn't have a phone, and in the five years he lived there, not a single person walked by the house.

By the time he returned to civilisation, Ansell had fully adapted to being on his own — and the social world was a bit of a shock. "What I found difficult was the amount of talking and I'm not an antisocial person." Another thing Ansell noticed was that his identity had gradually started to slip away. "When you're alone, you start to lose your sense of who you are, since you don't have an image of yourself reflected in the way that other people react to you. To some extent, when I returned, I had to rediscover who I could be in a social context," he says.

Human beings are deeply social creatures. This is obvious from the way we live, but scientists have discovered that there seems to be a link: over millions of years, species with more social contacts tend to evolve larger brains. It turns out this works the other way around, too: a lack of socialising can make them shrink.

Adapted from “How solitude and isolation can affect your social skills,” BBC, October 23 rd, 2020. <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201022-how-solitude-and-isolation-can-change-how-you-think>

QUESTIONS

B.1.- Are the following statements TRUE or FALSE? Copy the evidence from the text. No marks are given for only TRUE or FALSE.

(Puntuación máxima: 2 puntos)

a)

Neil Ansell had planned, even before the 1980s, to live alone in the mountains.

TRUE

FALSE

b)

Research has found that the smaller the human brain, the greater the extent of its social world.

TRUE

FALSE

B.2.- In your own words and based on the ideas in the text, answer the following questions. Do not copy from the text.

(Puntuación máxima: 2 puntos)

a)

Why did Neil Ansell go to live in the mountains?

b)

Briefly explain two things that happened to Neil Ansell when he moved back to London.