Reading Comprehension Passage asked in IBPS CLERK Prelims Exam 2018 – Slot 2 – Day 2

1. What is the Synonym of “Exercise” ?

2. What is the Synonym of “Practice”?

Reading Comprehension Passage 

Our supposedly shrinking attention spans are a hot topic these days—as you may have seen on TV or heard on a podcast or read on Twitter or glimpsed on your watch or else just intuited from the antsy melancholy of those few unbearable minutes each morning between when you open your eyes and when you first reach for your phone.

Emblematic of the genre is a 2015 Microsoft report that claimed the average human attention span had shrunk from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds in 2013 (even shorter than the nine seconds of focus maintained by the notoriously distractible goldfish), presumably on its way to zero.

Yes, this sort of alarmism is as old as the hills. An 1897 article in The American Electrician worried that a growing dependence on the telephone would turn us all into “transparent heaps of jelly.” But while the notion of addiction to our smartphones (the most usual suspects in the current attention crisis) is contested, numerous studies have found that compulsive phone use can lead to separation anxiety, chronic fear of missing out, and a painful thumb condition known as de Quervain’s tenosynovitis—signs worrying enough that we can’t rule out the eventual jellification of humanity.

Curiously, our bond with our phones persists even when they are doing literally nothing. Researchers in Paris observed that 37 percent of women and 30 percent of men walking by themselves held in their hand a smartphone they weren’t using. (Pairs of men and women held phones as they walked only 18 percent of the time, suggesting that we can still capture each other’s attention on occasion.)

Yet blaming smartphones for our distractibility feels too easy—human attention has always been fleeting. A study conducted several years before the first iPhone was unveiled found that workers spent an average of just two minutes using a particular tool or document before switching to another. Moreover, interruptions may have a silver lining. Many workers who were insulated from distraction by website-blocking software became more aware of time’s passage and were able to work for longer stretches—but also reported higher stress levels as a result of their sustained focus.

For those seeking to exercise greater control over their attention span, science has some suggestions. A 2016 study found that mindfulness meditation led to short-term improvements in attention and focus, and that the benefits were disproportionately large among heavy multimedia multitaskers. And research published earlier this year suggests that the long-term attentional benefits of regular mindfulness practice may be even more substantial than previously thought.

Ultimately, it’s worth asking: How long do we really want our attention span to be? A little mindfulness can be grounding, while too much sustained focus can dial up our stress levels. What’s lacking these days, then, may not be attention so much as moderation in the face of countless stimuli that are simultaneously diverting and engrossing. In the end, it seems like our only hope as a people, as a civilization, really, is to … to, um—sorry. Lost my train of thought.

Wrong Number Questions asked in IBPS CLERK Prelims Exam 2018 – Slot 2 – Day 2

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Download – IBPS CLERK Prelims Exam 2017 Memory Based Question

Download – IBPS CLERK PRELIMS EXAM 2018 – Call Letter

Aspirants can check the official notification of the IBPS CLERK 2018 from the official website of IBPS (www.ibps.in) or from the link that is provided below.

IBPS CLERK 2018 – Official Notification [Download PDF]