Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 36 to 42

Today, Snyder is seeing the fruits of the collaboration. In a recent issue of the Journal of Comparative Psychology (Vol. 117, No. 3), the research group published the first study of giant panda cub-rearing and separation. The study is the first step in examining the impact of a common breeding practice in China: separating captive cubs before they are six months old so that the mothers will be able to reproduce again sooner. Cubs in the wild stay with their mothers for 1.5 to 2.5 years.

Snyder and her co-authors, including Maple and psychologist Mollie Bloomsmith, PhD, theorize that separating cubs from their mothers too early may harm their social development, and could underlie why so many captive pandas fail to breed. Captive males often show little sexual interest in females or are too aggressive.

The research team has also conducted urinary and behavioral analyses of female giant pandas during the breeding season, which is generally in the spring, and is examining the behavior of giant panda mothers. Graduate student Megan Wilson, who also has worked in Chengdu, is investigating sequences of play-fighting for her dissertation. And former graduate student and Chengdu researcher Loraine Tarou, PhD, examined giant panda cognition.

Tarou, now an assistant professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, is the first to examine how captive pandas forage for food and learn to adapt to changes in their environment. She compared her findings with the cognition of the spectacled bear and found that while both use spatial memory to find food, the spectacled bears used visual cues the pandas did not pick up on.

The finding indicates that giant pandas' reliance on spatial memory alone may cause them to have difficulty when their food sources are abruptly changed or moved--a big problem for an animal that consumes nearly 30 pounds of bamboo a day.

While such basic research may not have immediate application, says Tarou, it is contributing to scientists' growing knowledge of the species.

(Adapted from https://www.apa.org/)

The word “conducted” in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word whose