When choosing the perfect house, many people choose high ceilings and a sense of space, despite high price and the higher cost of heating expense in the winter. Now a new study suggests that tall rooms excite the brain and encourage people to explore space, building on previous research that high ceilings are linked to a sense of freedom. A psychologist thinks that the combination of a room that promotes free thinking and is stimulating to the senses, which explains why people choose that kind of homes.

Dr Oshin Vartanian of the University of Toronto-Scarborough, told Fast Co Design: ‘On the one hand, rooms with high ceilings promote visuospatial exploration.” An international study, led by Dr Vartanian scanned the brains of volunteers while they looked at images of 200 rooms, half of which had high ceilings. Participants indicated whether each image was beautiful or not while in the FMRI scanner and the experts found that people were more likely to find spaces with high ceilings attractive, than those with low ceilings. This suggests that high ceilings capture people’s attention and stimulate the senses, encouraging people to explore the space they are in. But because the results didn’t show any difference in brain regions linked to pleasure or emotion, the study, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, hints that high ceilings don’t instantly put people in a good mood.

In 2007, another study, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, revealed that the height of ceilings affects how people think. Marketing experts Joan Meyers-Levy and Rui Zhu modified the height of ceilings in rooms to study how participants responded. They discovered that high ceilings seem to cause people to think more freely, encouraging creativity and abstraction, while lower ceilings promoted confined thinking. For example, one experiment placed volunteers in a room with a high 3 metre ceiling, while asking them to solve anagrams. They were able to complete work puzzles faster than those in a room with a lower ceiling.

Dr Vartanian said: ‘Knowing that people’s preference for rooms with higher ceilings might be driven by the ability of those spaces to promote visuospatial exploration helps partly explain why people opt to live in such spaces.”

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1.What is the best title of the passage?

A Why do we love high ceilings

B What caused high house price

C How do we feel in the winter

D When will people feel excited

解析：选A。A。标题概况题。从文章的第1段第1句When choosing the perfect house, many people choose high ceilings and a sense of space可以得知该文主要讲述人们喜欢屋顶高的房子的原因。

2.From the passage, we can know high ceiling make people ______.

A explore the cost

B think more freely

C see more colors

D get more homes

解析：选B。B。推理判断题。根据文章第1段第3句的A psychologist thinks that the combination of a room that promotes free thinking可知高顶的房子会让人的思想更加自由。

3.Dr Vartanian carried out his study by ______.

A promoting visuospatial exploration

B comparing volunteers’ brains scanning picture

C looking at images of 200 rooms

D capturing attention and stimulating the senses

解析：选B。B。细节理解题。根据第2段第2句的An international study, led by Dr Vartanian scanned the brains of volunteers可知他通过扫描志愿者的大脑，并对扫描大脑图像进行比较从而进行研究。

4.Who would be interested in the article?

A Representatives who sell houses.

B Students who learn languages

C Scientists who study the outer space

D Journalists who report medicine.

解析：选A。A。推理判断题。根据文章第3段第2句的Marketing experts Joan Meyers-Levy and Rui Zhu modified the height of ceilings in rooms to study how participants responded可知市场专家对此很关注，另外该文讲述了房顶的高度问题，因此房屋销售代表也会对该文感兴趣。

5.The underline word “anagarms” in the third paragraph may refer to _____.

A ceilings

B volunteers

C puzzles

D rooms

解析：选C。C。词意指代题。根据文章第3段第5句的They were able to complete work puzzles faster than those in a room with a lower ceiling可知上句的那个词就是指让志愿者们玩的由颠倒字母顺序构成的字而构成的“字谜”，也就是下面提到的puzzles。