Questão 10 — Língua Inglesa: Vocabulário — Sinônimos

Texto-base:
Why Can Some Kids Handle Pressure While Others Fall Apart?

Never before has the pressure to perform on high-stakes
tests been so intense or meant so much for a child's
academic future. As more school districts strive for
accountability, standardized tests have proliferated. The
pressure to do well on achievement tests for college is
filtering its way down to lower grades, so that even third
graders feel as if they are on trial. Students get the
message that class work isn't what counts, and that the
standardized exam is the truer measure. Sure, you did your
homework and wrote a great history report – but this test is
going to find out how smart you really are. Critics argue
that all this test-taking is churning out sleep-deprived,
overworked, miserable children.
But some children actually do better under competitive,
stressful circumstances. Why can Jacob thrive under
pressure, while it makes Noah feel incapable? And how should
that difference inform the way we think about high-stakes
testing? An emerging field of research – and a pioneering
study from Taiwan – has begun to offer some clues. Like any
kind of human behavior, our response to competitive pressure
is derived from a complex set of factors – how we were
raised, our skills and experience, the hormones that we
marinated in as fetuses. There is also a genetic component:
One particular gene, referred to as the COMT gene, could to
a large degree explain why one child is more prone to be
a worrier, while another may be unflappable, or in the
memorable phrasing of David Goldman, a geneticist at the
National Institutes of Health, more of a warrior.
Understanding their propensity to become stressed and how
to deal with it can help children compete. Stress turns out
to be far more complicated than we've assumed, and far more
under our control than we imagine. Unlike long-term stress,
short-term stress can actually help people perform,
and viewing it that way changes its effect. Even for those
genetically predisposed to anxiety, the antidote isn't
necessarily less competition – it's more competition. It
just needs to be the right kind.
There are many psychological and physiological reasons
that long-term stress is harmful, but the science of elite
performance has drawn a different conclusion about short-
term stress. Studies that compare professionals with amateur
competitors – whether concert pianists, male rugby or female
volleyball players – show that professionals feel just as
much anxiety as amateurs. The difference is in how they
interpret their anxiety. The amateurs view it as
detrimental, while the professionals tend to view stress as
energizing. It gets them to focus.

(Adapted from http://www.nytimes.com)

A synonym for the adjective "unflappable" (line 26) as used in the text is