英语听力文摘 English Digest 98、你真的曾经到过这里吗？

　　Have you really benn there before?
Many people at one time or another have experienced déjà vu. French for “already seen,” déjà vu is a sudden strong feeling that a moment identical to the present one has occurred at some earlier time.
To a cognitive¹ psychologist, déjà vu is proof of the immense amount of knowledge and experience we store in our brains. When we experience déjà vu, what actually happens is that, in a fraction of a second, we retrieve² bits of many different memory fragments and piece them together, producing what seems to be a complete memory.
So, if you experience déjà vu in a mall restaurant while waiting for a pepperoni pizza with your best friend, your mind has taken perhaps hundreds of stored memories of various experiences, and put together fragments from those memories to give you the sensation of having been there before, even though you haven’t been there before at all.
Cognitive psychologists who study how we use language are not surprised at the brain’s ability to create déjà vu. Actually, language comprehension and déjà vu have many parallels. When you hear someone speak, you usually understand them even though you’ve probably never heard their words presented in exactly the same way.
You understand these sentences because your brain is able to remember the individual meanings of words, based on hundreds of past experiences with those words. Your brain takes the meanings of individual words and splices³ them together to comprehend their meaning as a whole. As with déjà vu, this entire process happens in a split second.
identical:相同的
retrieve:找回，检索
pepperoni:意大利腊香肠

1 cognitive   

adj.认知的，认识的，有感知的

参考例句：

• As children grow older,their cognitive processes become sharper.孩子们越长越大，他们的认知过程变得更为敏锐。
• The cognitive psychologist is like the tinker who wants to know how a clock works.认知心理学者倒很像一个需要通晓钟表如何运转的钟表修理匠。

2 retrieve   

vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索

参考例句：

• He was determined to retrieve his honor.他决心恢复名誉。
• The men were trying to retrieve weapons left when the army abandoned the island.士兵们正试图找回军队从该岛撤退时留下的武器。

3 splices   

v.绞接( splice的第三人称单数 )；捻接（两段绳子）；胶接；粘接（胶片、磁带等）

参考例句：

• All field splices were bolted using ASTM A325 hex head bolts. 所有现场拼接都用美国材料试验协会的A325六角形头螺栓。 来自辞典例句
• A gateway splices together two different kinds of protocols. 网关可拼接两种不同的协议。 来自互联网