Recording Two
In last week’s lecture, we discussed the characteristics of the newly born offspring of several mammals. You probably remember that human infants are less developed physically than other mammals of the same age. [19] But in today’s lecture, we’ll look at three very interesting studies that hint at the surprising abilities of human babies.
In the first study, 3-year-olds watch two videos shown side by side, each featuring a different researcher, one of whom they’d met once, two years earlier. The children spent longer watching the video showing the researcher they hadn’t met. This is consistent with young children’s usual tendency to look longer at things that aren’t familiar. And really this is amazing! It suggests the children remembered the researcher they’d met just one time when they were only one-year-olds. Of course, as most of us forget memories from our first few years as we grow older, these early long-term memories will likely be lost in subsequent years.
Our second study is about music. For this study researchers played music to babies through speakers located on either side of a human face. They waited until the babies got bored and inverted their gaze from the face. And then they changed the mood of the music—either from sad to happy, or the other way around. This mood switch made no difference to the 3-month-olds, but for the 9-month-olds it was enough to renew their interest and they started looking again in the direction of the face. [20] This suggests that babies of that age can tell the difference between a happy melody and a sad tune.
Our final study is from 1980, but it’s still relevant today. [21] In fact, it’s one of the most famous pieces of research about infant emotion ever published. The study involved ordinary adults watching video clips of babies 9-month or younger. In the video clips, the babies made various facial expressions in response to real life events, including playful interactions and painful ones. The adult observers were able to reliably discern an assortment of emotions on the babies, faces. These emotions included interest, joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, and fear.
Next week, we’ll be looking at this last study more closely. In fact, we will be viewing some of the video clips from that study. And together, see how well we do in discerning the babies’ emotions.
19. What are the three interesting studies about?
【试题答案】A
【试题解析】题目问这三项有趣的研究是关于什么的？录音开头提到“在今天的讲座中，我们将看到三个非常有趣的研究，它们暗示了人类婴儿惊人的能力（abilities of human babies）”，因此A选项“人类婴儿的能力”正确。B选项“成年人对儿童的影响”，三个研究虽有成年人参与，但这些研究并不是研究成年人对儿童的影响，因此B选项不正确；C选项“不同新生哺乳动物在认知方面的特征”是上周的讲座所讨论的内容，而不是本周；D选项“人类婴儿和动物婴儿之间的相似之处”，录音中未提及相关信息。
20. What does the second study find about 9-month- old babies?
【试题答案】D
【试题解析】题目问关于9个月大的婴儿，第二项研究有什么发现？在第二项研究中，提到音乐氛围的变化对3个月大的婴儿没有影响，但对于9个月大的婴儿来说，这足以重新引起他们的兴趣，这表明该年龄段的婴儿能够区分快乐的旋律和悲伤的旋律。因此D选项“他们能分辨出快乐的曲调和悲伤的曲调”符合原文。A选项“他们喜欢快乐的旋律胜过悲伤的旋律”和B选项“他们听音乐时很容易睡着”在录音中没有信息提及；C选项“他们对节拍和节奏已经很敏感了”。beats and rhythms在录音中并未出现，因此C选项可排除。
21. What is the 1980 study about?
【试题答案】A
【试题解析】题目问1980年那项研究是关于什么的？录音中提到，该项研究是迄今为止发表的关于婴儿情绪（infant emotion）的最著名的研究之一，因此A选项“婴儿的情绪”正确。B选项“婴儿的行为”并没有提及；C选项“婴儿和成人的互动”，利用录音的playful interactions设干扰，但录音是说婴儿看到playful interactions时脸部的表情，不是婴儿自己的interactions，因此C选项不正确；D选项“婴儿的面部表情”是最具有干扰性的一项。事实上，facial expressions在这项研究中很重要，但这是为研究婴儿情绪服务的，因此D选项不选。
