Reading 2026-05 Test 42 — IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test with Answers

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Reading Passage 1: Artist Fingerprints

Works of art often bear the fingerprints of the artist who created them. Such crucial evidence usually goes unnoticed even by connoisseurs, art experts and conservators. If present, such evidence could be valuable in clarifying questions about authorship and dating.

A The use of the term forensic usually contains elements like crime, legal procedure or academic rhetoric. Our objective, however, is not to see who committed a crime but rather who committed the work of art in question and to put forward evidences sound enough to stand up to professional scrutiny. The value of such evidence is extremely high as the probability for the existence of two identical finger impressions from different individuals is nil and no such occurrence has ever been noticed in any part of the world at any time. The science of fingerprint identification is based on that accepted fact.

B The unique character of ridges on our hands has been recognized for thousands of years. The study of ancient pottery for example reveals the utilization of fingerprint impressions in the clay as a maker's mark. In prehistoric times, we find examples of hand prints in cave painting. Only as recently as 1858 did Sir William Herschel establish its use for identification. In 1888, Sir Francis Galton undertook to refine and formulate Herschel's observations. Identification by fingerprint was first adopted in England in 1905 and received general acceptance worldwide in 1908.

C The combination of a number of characteristics in a given finger impression is specific to a particular print. The placing of implicit reliance on fingerprint evidence by our courts of law has always been on the assumption (now accepted as a fact) that no two fingers can have identical ridge characteristics. Galton's mathematical conclusions predicted the possible existence of some 64 billion different fingerprint patterns.

D Artists in the area of the visual arts use their hands for creation. Their tools, such as brushes, often isolate them from the surface they are working on. Inaccurate deposits of paint are often corrected by modeling with the fingertip. Some artists used the fingertip to soften the marks left by the brush by gently tapping or stroking the still wet surfaces. In some instances, the fingertip was used for literally "stamping" the fine network of ridges onto the painting.

E The eventual authentication of a painting by J. M. W. Turner entitled Landscape with Rainbow in 1993 is a good illustration of the process. The painting was discovered in the early 1980s. Biros took the painting to the Tate Gallery, in London, to show it to the world's leading Turner experts and connoisseurs. The verdict was unanimous - the painting was a tattered imitation. However, fingerprint evidence was discovered on the painting during restoration, appropriately documented, and re-examined by a veteran expert from the RCMP. A match was found between a fingerprint on "Landscape with Rainbow" and fingerprints photographed on another Turner painting, 'Chichester Canal.' When an independent fingerprint examination by John Manners of the West Yorkshire Police confirmed the conclusions that the fingerprints on both paintings were identical, the unbelievers changed their minds. In addition, it is well known that Turner always worked alone and had no assistants. This reduces the chances of accidental contribution substantially. The painting, originally bought for a few hundred dollars, finally sold for close to $200,000 at auction at Phillips in London in 1995.

F In 1998, three envelopes containing old correspondence had been purchased in an antique shop. One of the envelopes postmarked April 2, 1915 was found to contain a drawing folded in half. The drawing depicts a woman's head. It is executed in red chalk with an inscription written in reverse with brown ink. The design is faded and worn. Some spots suggest foxing and subsequent discoloration. The paper is yellowed and contaminated.

G The newly discovered design bears great similarity to that of the Head of St. Anne by Leonardo da Vinci, in the Windsor Collection since 1629. The medium is different, red chalk being used instead of black. The scale of the two images is different so offsetting (copying by contact transference) is not a satisfactory explanation for the new drawing. Differences also exist in the design itself, principally in the folds of the veil, in the presence of an additional strand of braid and in the angle of the head. The figure is softer, which may be due to fading, wear and contamination. In addition, the use of a damp brush is indicated in microscopic examination and is likely responsible in part for the softness of the image. When the paper was first examined, several fingerprints have been noticed on the verso. One of them was found clear and containing many ridges suitable for comparison, however, no analysis was done at the time due to the lack of reference material. Many of Leonardo's works are not easily accessible and fingerprint data either does not exist or is not published.

H By chance, on March 30, 1999, several clear and useable fingerprints were found on an unusually good detail photo in a publication on Leonardo. The photograph of Leonardo's St. Jerome, in the Vatican Museum, revealed no less than 16 partial fingertip marks. The importance of this is that the fingerprints are left in the still wet paint and without doubt the use of the fingertip served to model paint. Since the authorship of the painting of St. Jerome is unquestioned by scholarship and has always been ascribed to Leonardo, the conclusion that these fingerprints are his would be hard to argue against.

I The fingerprints on the St. Jerome illustration were scanned and enlarged so comparisons could be made with the fingerprint on the newly discovered drawing. One of them proved to match. The result of the analyses was presented on March 31, 1999 to fingerprint examiner Staff Sergeant Andre Turcotte for an independent assessment. He agreed with the findings and confirmed the conclusion. The fingerprint on the St Jerome painting in the Vatican and the newly discovered drawing were created by the same finger.

J Remember, the authentication approach should rest on strict considerations and rigorous methodology. Only prints that are clearly from the original creative process are admitted for consideration. The reference samples should ideally come from unquestioned works of art with good provenance. Spurious contributors must be eliminated such as assistants who may have touched the painting while still wet. A match is never made unless corroborated by at least one fully trained and experienced fingerprint examiner.

1
Mention of fingerprint identification in the legal process.
2
The author's advice on fingerprint authentication of arts.
3
The use of fingerprint in the ancient time
4
The medium comparison between two drawings.
5
The fingerprint in ancient pottery
6
The science of fingerprint identification
7
The authentication of a painting without a signature
8
Landscape with Rainbow
9
When painting, artist
10
The attribution of Landscape with Rainbow to Turner
- A. was in overwhelming consensus at the beginning.
- B. was first brought forward by the West Yorkshire Police.
- C. was rejected by the Biros.
- D. was not exactly located for years.
11
The drawing of a woman's head contained in the envelope
- A. was finished in 1915.
- B. was executed in brown ink.
- C. was in poor condition.
- D. was folded for protection.
12
The drawing of The Head of St Anne
- A. is the work of Leonardo Da Vinci.
- B. is softer due to fading and contamination.
- C. bears some fingerprints on the verso.
- D. is in the Vatican Museum.
13
The authentication approach mentioned in the passage
- A. accepts all fingerprints found on the artwork.
- B. requires fingerprints from the original creative process only.
- C. allows assistants' fingerprints as valid evidence.
- D. depends mainly on the artwork's provenance.

Reading Passage 2: Improving Sensory Perception

People differ dramatically in their perceptual abilities — what they are able to see, hear, feel, taste and smell. It's fairly noticeable when someone's sight, for example, is superior or inferior to that of others, but some people have enhanced abilities in other, more frequently ignored faculties. There are "supertasters" among us who perceive stronger tastes from various sweet and bitter substances (a trait linked with a greater number of taste receptors on the tip of the tongue). It's not all good news for the supertasters though — they also perceive more burn from spices such as chilli. In studies, women have been shown to have superior abilities in relation to the perception of touch. Interestingly, this turns out not to really be a gender thing at all, but rather down to the size of your fingers. Having smaller fingers results in touch receptors that are more closely packed together, and therefore leads to perception at a finer resolution.

The body's sensory receptors largely set a limit on what we can perceive. However, our perception is much more flexible than you might expect. The scientific field of perceptual learning is helping us to understand perception and, therefore, find ways to improve it. Research reveals that, in the same way that we can train to improve our skills in sports or languages, we can also train to improve what we can see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Such training generally involves the trainee being presented with a range of sensory stimuli that vary in how easy they are to perceive. Taking touch as an example, these might be vibrations on the fingertip which differ in frequency (how fast they pulse). Typically, training starts with stimuli that vary considerably in terms of the frequency at which they pulse. In this way, the judgement the trainee has to make about whether the stimuli are similar or different is easy to make. Judgements become harder, however, as the stimuli become more similar. Feedback on whether a judgement is correct or not significantly improves learning, as it allows people to match what they feel with the properties of the actual stimuli.

It was long thought that you could only improve your perception by such explicit training, but it is now known that it is also possible to boost your sensory perception when you're not actively doing anything or are even aware that the training is happening. In one incredible experiment, scientists trained participants to generate activity in the posterior part of their brain while being observed in a brain scanner. By the later stage of the experiment, the participants were able to generate brain activity that matched what would occur if they were looking at a particular visual stimulus (which wasn't actually there). The scientists let the participants know how well they were doing at reproducing the brain activity, in order to help them improve, but didn't actually tell them that they were being trained. At the end of the experiment, participants were asked to identify various visual stimuli, including the one they had worked on. It turned out that, in comparison to other visual stimuli, they were faster and more accurate in identifying the stimulus from the training, despite not having viewed it previously.

But how much better can someone expect their sensory perception to get? That largely depends on how long and hard they train, and how effective the training is. The improvement can be substantial: in some studies, touch training has produced enhancements of up to 42% of participants' original acuity, after just two hours of training. More surprising are the studies into visual acuity that report enhancements of perception into a range beyond what the sensory receptors should allow — into the range known as hyperacuity. Usually when people are looking at a photograph, the more pixels there are, the sharper the picture appears. However, in the case of hyperacuity, people can actually see finer than the pixel resolution should permit.

Such high degrees of visual sensory perception are due to clever processing in the brain: when we look at a photograph, our brains assess across the whole grid of receptors to determine where the "centre of gravity" falls — revealing position and shape by the spatial clustering of information on the grid. In fact, a surprising amount of perception turns out to be determined less by the receptor organ than by the brain. For instance, training which aims to help you see better does not actually do anything to alter the photoreceptors in your eye. While the same sensory information is getting into the neurological system through these receptors, the training allows the brain to filter out noise and more effectively tune into the sensory signal.

The fact that we can train our brains to improve the way we extract sensory information from the world is a very positive development, and concepts of perceptual learning have been used to create brain training apps. While these apps cannot entirely overcome the problems of sensory degradation caused by ageing receptors, they can, if designed correctly, give you a significant boost. With technological progress in this area, we move towards fantastic opportunities to maximise our sensory perception, and to aid rehabilitation for people who have experienced sensory degradation.

14
a reference to enhancing perceptual ability without a person's knowledge
15
an explanation of how high levels of sensory perception occur naturally
16
a comparison between sensory training and other types of learning
17
a mention of a negative consequence of having an exceptional perceptual ability
18
an explanation of how the brain perceives a high level of detail in an image
19
a reference to a situation in which sensory damage could be reversed
20
Differences in perceptual ability are more obvious when they occur with the sense of _______ than taste.
21
The end of a supertaster's _______ has more receptors than that of other people.
22
Supertasters may suffer more than others when they eat foods like _______.
23
A greater sensitivity of touch is more dependent on finger _______ than gender.
24
Stimuli such as _______ on the fingertip may be used to help someone improve their sense of touch.
25
Which TWO of these statements does the writer make about brain training apps?
- A. They have made learning more enjoyable.
- B. They hold great promise for the future.
- C. They encourage people to ignore irrelevant information.
- D. They are not widely regarded as a positive development.
- E. They can reduce the impact of the sensory degradation that occurs as people get older.

Reading Passage 3: Jean Piaget (1896–1980)

Jean Piaget spent much of his professional life listening to children, watching children and poring over reports of researchers around the world who were doing the same. He found, to put it most succinctly, that children don’t think like grown-ups. After thousands of interactions with young people often barely old enough to talk, Piaget began to suspect that behind their cute and seemingly irrational utterances were thought processes that had their own kind of order and their own special logic. Einstein called it “a discovery so simple that only a genius could have thought of it.”

Although not an educational reformer, Piaget championed a way of thinking about children that provided the foundation for today’s education-reform movements. It was a shift comparable to the way modern anthropology displaced stories of primitive tribes being ‘noble savages’ and ‘cannibals’. One might say that Piaget was the first to take children’s thinking seriously.

He has been revered by generations of teachers inspired by the belief that children are not empty vessels to be filled with knowledge (as traditional pedagogical theory had it) but active builders of knowledge—little scientists who are constantly creating and testing their own hypotheses about the world. And though he may not be as famous as Sigmund Freud or even B. F. Skinner, his influence on psychology may be longer lasting.

In 1920, while doing research in a child-psychology laboratory in Paris, Piaget noticed that children of the same age made similar errors on intelligence tests. Fascinated by their reasoning processes, he began to suspect that the key to human knowledge might be discovered by observing how the child’s mind develops. On his return to Switzerland he began watching children play, scrupulously recording their words and actions as their minds raced to find reasons for why things are the way they are. In one of his most famous experiments, Piaget asked children, ‘What makes the wind?’ A typical dialogue would be:

Piaget What makes the wind?

Julia The trees.

Piaget How do you know?

Julia I saw them waving their arms.

Piaget How does that make the wind?

Julia (waving her hand in front of his face) Like this. Only they are bigger. And there are lots of trees.

Piaget recognised that five-year-old Julia’s beliefs, while not correct by any adult criterion, are not ‘incorrect’ either. They are entirely sensible and coherent within the framework of the child’s way of knowing. Classifying them as ‘true’ or ‘false’ misses the point and shows a lack of respect for the child. What Piaget was after was a theory that the wind dialogue demonstrated coherence, ingenuity and the practice of a kind of explanatory principle (in this case by referring to body actions) that stands young children in very good stead when they don’t know enough or don’t have enough skill to handle the kind of explanation that grown-ups prefer.

Piaget was not an educator and never laid down rules about how to intervene in such situations. But his work strongly suggests that the automatic reaction of putting the child right may well be counter-productive. If their theories are always greeted by ‘Nice try, but this is how it really is…’ they might give up after a while on making theories. As Piaget put it, ‘children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them something too quickly, we keep them from inventing it themselves.’

Disciples of Piaget have a tolerance for—indeed a fascination with—children’s primitive laws of physics: that things disappear when they are out of sight; that the moon and the sun follow you around; that big things float and small things sink. Einstein was intrigued by Piaget’s findings, especially by the idea that seven-year-olds insist that going faster can take more time—perhaps because this, like Einstein’s own theories of relativity, runs so contrary to common sense.

Although every teacher in training still memorises Piaget’s successive stages of childhood development, the greater part of Piaget’s work is less well known, perhaps because schools of education regard it as ‘too deep’ for teachers. Piaget never thought of himself as a child psychologist. His real interest was epistemology—the theory of knowledge—which, like physics, was considered a branch of philosophy until Piaget came along and made it a science.

Through epistemology, Piaget explored multiple ways of knowing. He acknowledged them and examined them non-judgementally, yet with a philosopher’s analytic rigour. Since Piaget, the territory has been widely colonised by those who write about women’s ways of knowing, Afrocentric ways of knowing, even the computer’s ways of knowing. Indeed, artificial intelligence and the information-processing model of the mind owe more to Piaget than its proponents may realise.

The core of Piaget is his belief that looking carefully at how knowledge develops in children will elucidate the nature of knowledge in general. Whether this has in fact led to deeper understanding remains, like everything about Piaget, controversial. In the past decade, Piaget has been vigorously challenged by the current fashion of viewing knowledge as an intrinsic property of the brain. Ingenious experiments have demonstrated that newborn infants already have some of the knowledge that Piaget believed children constructed. But for those, like me, who still see Piaget as the giant in the field of cognitive theory, the difference between what the baby brings and what the adult has is so immense that the new discoveries do not significantly reduce the gap, but only increase the mystery.

26
27 In the second paragraph, the writer mentions the example of modern anthropology to illustrate
- A. the universality of Piaget’s insights into the workings of the mind.
- B. the similarity between children’s thought-processing in different cultures.
- C. how Piaget’s work represents a crucial turning-point in our approach to education.
- D. how Piaget’s work has aided our understanding of humankind’s evolution from primitive origins.
27
28 According to the writer, what point is illustrated by the dialogue about the wind?
- A. The factual accuracy of what children say is of minor significance.
- B. Children want to learn about scientific principles.
- C. Children’s reasoning processes can be amusing to adults.
- D. Children often pretend that they know the answers to questions.
28
29 Piaget believed in the importance of
- A. preventing children from making false assumptions.
- B. giving children honest feedback on their hypotheses.
- C. showing children how to formulate their own ideas about the world.
- D. maintaining children’s confidence in their ability to interpret the world.
29
30 What does the writer suggest in the seventh paragraph?
- A. Children’s sense of their surroundings changes as they get older.
- B. Children are able to grasp certain complex ideas as well as adults are.
- C. Even apparently irrational ideas can be worthy of interest.
- D. Sometimes the simplest explanations are the best.
30
31 The writer’s main purpose is to
- A. outline Piaget’s contribution to a range of scientific fields.
- B. summarise how education has benefited from Piaget’s findings.
- C. discuss Piaget’s role in the development of 20th-century psychology.
- D. express doubts about a number of Piaget’s theories.
31
32–36 Complete the summary using the list of words, A–I, below. Piaget maintained that children’s mental processes were far more __________ than they might appear. He encouraged the view that a child was not a ‘blank slate’ waiting to be filled with information, but rather a systematic builder of knowledge who regularly tries out his or her own __________ about the world. Piaget’s impact on the area of __________ could well outlast that of more celebrated pioneers of this discipline. Despite doubts cast over his ideas by the current view associating knowledge exclusively with the __________, the effects of his work are still strong today. His principles are still widely used in the professional development of __________. A correct B theories C brain D simple E teachers F psychology G logical H thought I philosophers
32
37 Piaget’s early work in Paris involved innovative research techniques.
- YES. YES
- NO. NO
- NOT GIVEN. NOT GIVEN
33
38 Piaget gave clear guidelines as to how adults should give information to children.
34
39 Piaget made a significant contribution to the field of epistemology.
35
40 We still have much to learn about the nature of knowledge.

Phiếu trả lời

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Hiện đáp án

1. C
Option C is correct because the passage mentions fingerprint identification being used in the legal process, such as in criminal investigations and court cases.
2. J
Option J is correct because the author advises that fingerprint authentication should be used carefully and only as one part of the process when authenticating art.
3. B
Option B is correct as the passage describes how fingerprints were used in ancient times, for example, in Babylonian clay tablets for business transactions.
4. G
Option G is correct because the passage compares the medium (such as ink or chalk) used in two drawings to help identify their origins.
5. D
Option D is correct since the passage explains that fingerprints have been found on ancient pottery, showing their use in early times.
6. G
Option G is correct because the passage discusses the science behind fingerprint identification, including how fingerprints are unique and can be analyzed.
7. I
Option I is correct as the passage explains that a painting without a signature can be authenticated by other means, such as fingerprint evidence.
8. F
Option F is correct because the passage specifically mentions 'Landscape with Rainbow' as an artwork being discussed.
9. A
Option A is correct since the passage states that artists often leave fingerprints on their work while painting.
10. D
Option D is correct because the passage says the attribution of 'Landscape with Rainbow' to Turner was not exactly located for years, not immediately agreed upon or brought forward by police. Option A is tempting but fails because there was no overwhelming consensus at the beginning.
11. C
Option C is correct as the passage describes the drawing of a woman's head as being in poor condition, rather than finished in 1915, executed in brown ink, or folded for protection.
12. A
Option A is correct because the passage states that 'The Head of St Anne' is the work of Leonardo Da Vinci, not just softer, bearing fingerprints, or in the Vatican Museum.
13. B
Option B is correct as the passage says the authentication approach only accepts fingerprints from the original creative process, not all fingerprints or those of assistants.
14. C
Option C is correct because the passage refers to enhancing perceptual ability without a person's knowledge, such as through subtle training methods.
15. E
Option E is correct as the passage explains how some people naturally have high levels of sensory perception.
16. B
Option B is correct because the passage compares sensory training to other types of learning, showing similarities in how skills are developed.
17. A
Option A is correct since the passage mentions a negative consequence of exceptional perceptual ability, such as being overwhelmed by sensory input.
18. E
Option E is correct because the passage explains how the brain can perceive a high level of detail in an image by processing information efficiently.
19. F
Option F is correct as the passage refers to situations where sensory damage, like loss of touch, could be reversed through training or therapy.
20. sight
'Sight' is correct because the passage says differences in perceptual ability are more obvious with sight than with taste.
21. tongue
'Tongue' is correct as the passage states that a supertaster's tongue has more receptors at the end than other people.
22. chilli
'Chilli' is correct because the passage says supertasters may suffer more when eating spicy foods like chilli.
23. size
'Size' is correct as the passage explains that sensitivity of touch depends more on finger size than gender.
24. vibrations
'Vibrations' is correct because the passage mentions that stimuli like vibrations on the fingertip can help improve the sense of touch.
25. B / E
Options B and E are correct. The passage says brain training apps hold promise for the future (B) and can help reduce sensory degradation as people age (E). Option A is tempting but fails because the passage does not say they make learning more enjoyable.
26. C
Option C is correct because the passage uses modern anthropology to show how Piaget's work changed our approach to education, not just to show universality or similarities in children's thinking.
27. A
Option A is correct as the passage uses the wind dialogue to show that the factual accuracy of children's statements is less important than understanding their reasoning.
28. D
Option D is correct because the passage says Piaget believed it was important to maintain children's confidence in their ability to interpret the world.
29. C
Option C is correct since the passage suggests that even irrational ideas from children can be interesting and worth considering.
30. A
Option A is correct because the writer's main purpose is to outline Piaget's contributions to different scientific fields, not just education or psychology.
31. G / B / F / C / E
The answers are: G (logical), B (theories), F (psychology), C (brain), E (teachers). Each word fits the meaning of the sentence in the summary, as described in the passage.
32. NOT GIVEN
NOT GIVEN is correct because the passage does not mention whether Piaget's early work in Paris involved innovative research techniques.
33. NO
NO is correct as the passage does not say Piaget gave clear guidelines for adults on how to give information to children.
34. YES
YES is correct because the passage states Piaget made a significant contribution to epistemology, the study of knowledge.
35. YES
YES is correct as the passage says we still have much to learn about the nature of knowledge.

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Reading Passage 1: Artist Fingerprints

Reading Passage 2: Improving Sensory Perception

Reading Passage 3: Jean Piaget (1896–1980)

Phiếu trả lời

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