For each blank in the following passage, choose the best answer from the choices given below. Mark your answer on the Answer Sheet by drawing with a pencil a short bar across the corresponding letter in the brackets. Senility refers to great losses of intellectual capacity that occurs in old age and is associated with the widespread loss of nerve cells and the shrinkage of brain tissue. Senility is a great de.cline from a previous intellectual ___31___ in an aging person. Memory is the mental capacity most often affected. The memory loss may first show itself clearly in simple absentmind.edness or a tendency to forget or ___32___ things and repeat oneself in conversation. As the senility progresses, the loss of memory ____33___ in scope until the patient can no longer remember basic social and ___34___ skills or function independently. There may also be de.clines in the person’s language skills, spatial or temporal orientation, ___35____ or other cognitive capacities and personality changes may also be ___36___ to see. Senility usually has a slow, gradual onset and is most common in persons over age 75. The most common cause of the syndrome is Alzheimer’s disease, which ___37___ for about 50 percent of all elderly persons with unbalanced mind and is hard to restore a former state. The second most common cause is vascular senility which arises from hypertension (high blood pressure) or some other vascular condition. In this type, a series of small strokes pro.gressively destroy small ___38___ of the brain, eventually leading to senility. There is no ___39___ for Alzheimer’s disease, but vascular senility can sometimes be prevented or its ___40____ slowed by treatment of the underlying systemic vascular disorder. Among other significant causes of se.nility in the elderly are Huntington’s chorea, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis.
31. A. level B. extent C. scope D. criterion 32. A. replace B. misplace C. remove D. move 33. A. slows down B. quickens C. remains D. broadens 34. A. greeting B. communication C. reading D. survival 35. A. judgment B. efficiency C. curiosity D. expectations 36. A. plain B. eager C. hard D. certain 37. A. amounts B. answers C. accounts D. results 38. A. proportions B. portions C. numbers D. percentages 39. A. heal B. solution C. cure D. treatment 40. A. recovery B. path C. road D. course