剑桥雅思13Test3阅读passage2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

How baby talk gives infant brains a boost

“婴儿腔”对婴儿大脑发育的促进

The typical way of talking to a baby 一 high-pitched, exaggerated and repetitious 一 is a source of fascination for linguists who hope to understand how 'baby talk’ impacts on learning. Most babies start developing their hearing while still in the womb, prompting some hopeful parents to play classical music to their pregnant bellies. Some research even suggests that infants are listening to adult speech as early as 10 weeks before being born, gathering the basic building blocks of their family's native tongue.

通常人们向婴儿说话的方式——即高调门、夸张、重复——一直让语言学家们感到兴奋,他们想理解“婴儿腔”是如何影响学习行为的。多数婴儿在尚未出生时便开始发育听觉能力,这促使许多望子成龙的家长们会对着隆起的孕腹播放古典音乐。甚至有研究指出,婴儿在出生前10周便开始听成人说话,这为他们掌握家族的母语积累了素材。

Early language exposure seems to have benefits to the brain — for instance, studies suggest that babies raised in bilingual homes are better at learning how to mentally prioritize information. So how does the sweet if sometimes absurd sound of infantdirected speech influence a baby’s development? Here are some recent studies that explore the science behind baby talk.

较早接触语言似乎能让大脑受益——例如,研究表明在双语环境中成长的婴儿更善于学习如何在头脑中优化信息处理。那么对嬰儿说出甜蜜的(有时甚至是荒谬可笑的)腔调又是如何影响婴儿的成长发育的呢?以下这些近期的研究探讨了“婴儿腔”背后的科学道理。

Fathers don’t use baby talk as often or in the same ways as mothers - and that’s perfectly OK, according to a new study. Mark Van Dam of Washington State University at Spokane and colleagues equipped parents with recording devices and speech-recognition software to study the way they interacted with their youngsters during a normal day. ‘We found that moms do exactly what you'd expect and what’s been described many times over,’ Van Dam explains. ‘But we found that dads aren't doing the same thing. Dads didn't raise their pitch or fundamental frequency when they talked to kids.，Their role may be rooted in what is called the bridge hypothesis, which dates back to 1975. It suggests that fathers use less familial language to provide their children with a bridge to the kind of speech they'll hear in public. The idea is that a kid gets to practice a certain kind of speech with mom and another kind of speech with dad, so the kid then has a wider repertoire of kinds of speech to practice,' says VanDam.

据一项研究表明,父亲们通常不像母亲们那样频繁地或类似地使用“婴儿腔”这一点毫无问题。华盛顿州立大学(斯波坎)的马克·凡丹姆及其同事们给一些父母们装上了录音装置及声音识别软件,以研究他们在日常生活中是如何与婴儿进行互动的。他说:“我们发现母亲们的所作所为与人们所想的完全一样,也是人们多次重申过的。但我们也发现父亲们很少这样做。父亲们跟婴儿说话时通常不会提高声调或频率。”他们的角色或许植根于所谓的“桥梁假说”,这要追溯到1975年。这一假说认为父亲们之所以使用不那么亲密的语言,是为了让孩子街接在公众场合听到的声音。他说:“这个假说就是让孩子与母亲练习一种语言,而与父亲练习另一种语言,这样孩子就能有更广泛的语言储备。”

Scientists from the University of Washington and the University of Connecticut collected thousands of 30-second conversations between parents and their babies, fitting 26 children with audio-recording vests that captured language and sound during a typical eight-hour day. The study found that the more baby talk parents used, the more their youngsters began to babble. And when researchers saw the same babies at age two, they found that frequent baby talk had dramatically boosted vocabulary, regardless of socioeconomic status. Those children who listened to a lot of baby talk were talking more than the babies that listened to moreadult talk or standard speech,，says Nairan Ramfrez-Esparza of the University of Connecticut. ‘We also found that it really matters whether you use baby talk in a one-on-one context,' she adds. The more parents use baby talk one-on-one, the more babies babble, and the more they babble, the more words they produce later in life;

来自华盛顿大学和康涅狄格大学的科学家们收集了数千份父母与孩子间的对话,时长均为30秒,他们给孩子们穿上带有录音设备的马甲,能在日常的每天8小时的时间里收集语言和声音。研究发现父母用的“婴儿腔”越多,他们的孩子就越开始说话。而且当研究者们在孩子2岁再次探访时发现,频繁使用“婴儿腔极大地提高了嬰儿的词汇量,无论他们的社会经济阶层如何康涅狄格大你竹伦·拉米兹·伊斯帕扎说:“听‘嬰儿腔’比较多的婴儿说话多于听成人腔或正常名;话的婴儿」我们还发现是否在一对一的情况下使用‘婴儿腔’这一点也很关键。父母越频繁地一对一使用‘婴儿腔',婴儿就越频繁地牙牙学语,而他们学得越多,他们在今后的生活中就会使用更多的词。”

Another study suggests that parents might want to pair their youngsters up so they can babble more with their own kind. Researchers from McGill University and Universite du Quebec a Montreal found that babies seem to like listening to each other rather than to adults - which may be why baby talk is such a universal tool among parents. They played repeating vowel sounds made by a special synthesizing device that mimicked sounds made by either an adult woman or another baby. This way, only the impact of the auditory cues was observed. The team then measured how long each type of sound held the infants’ attention. They found that the ‘infant' sounds held babies' attention nearly 40 percent longer. The baby noises also induced more reactions in the listening infants, like smiling or lip moving, which approximates sound making. The team theorizes that this attraction to other infant sounds could help launch the learning process that leads to speech. 'It may be some property of the sound that is just drawing their attention,’ says study co-author Linda Polka. ‘Or maybe they are really interested in that particular type of sound because they are starting to focus on their own ability to make sounds. We are speculating here but it might catch their attention because they recognize it as a sound they could possibly make.1

另外一项研究表明父母们可能想让他们的孩子们结伴,这样孩子们就可以跟同龄人互相说话了。麦吉尔大学和魁北克大学蒙特利尔分校的研究者们发现婴儿们似更喜欢听同龄人说话而非听成人说话,这或许可以解释为什么“婴儿腔”是一种全球父母通晓的语言。研究者们播放了用特殊合成装置发出的重复元音,以模拟由成人女性或婴儿发出的声音。这样就可以只观察声音因素带来的影响。该团队随后再测量每种声音吸引住婴儿的时间。他们发现合成的婴儿声能够吸引婴儿注意力40秒之长。婴儿声还引发了婴儿听者更多的反应,例如微笑或咧嘴,这也接近于发声运作。该团队提出理论认为,这种对其他婴儿声音的吸引力有助于引发学习行为最终导致说话。研究合作者林达·波卡说:“也许是声音的某种属性引起了婴八们的注意;也许是他们确实对那类声音更感兴趣,因为他们开始注意自己的发声能力我们在这里只是推测,但这之所以引起他们的注意也可能是因为他们意识到他们也能发出这样的声音。

In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a total of 57 babies from two slightly different age groups - seven months and eleven and a half months - were played a number of syllables from both their native language (English) and a non-native tongue (Spanish). The infants were placed in a brainactivation scanner that recorded activity in a brain region known to guide the motor movements that produce speech. The results suggest that listening to baby talk prompts infant brains to start practicing their language skills. ‘Finding activation in motor areas of the brain when infants are simply listening is significant, because it means the baby brain is engaged in trying to talk back right from the start, and suggests that seven-month-olds’ brains are already trying to figure out how to make the right movements that will produce words,’ says co-author Patricia Kuhl. Another interesting finding was that while the seven-month-olds responded to all speech sounds regardless of language, the brains of the older infants worked harder at the motor activations of non-native sounds compared to native sounds. The study may have also uncovered a process by which babies recognize differences between their native language and other tongues.

在一份发表在《美国国家科学院公报》上的研究中,人们向两个略有不同的年龄组—7个月大、11个半月大—的共57名婴儿播放几个他们母语(英语)和9语(西班牙语)的音节。婴儿们接受了脑活动扫描仪对大脑区域的监测,这一大时区域是已知负责产生言语的运动机能。结果表明听到¨嬰儿腔”能促进婴儿大脑开始练习语言技能合作者帕特卡·库尔说:“婴儿仅仅通过聆听声音就能激活大时尔运动机能区域,这一发现很重要,因为这意味着婴儿的大脑在一开始就:备好要逆过说话来回应;这还表明7个月大的婴儿的大脑已经开始努力要想出如何动作来说出词语。”另一项有意思的发现就是虽然7个月大的婴儿对两种语言的声音都有反应,但另一年龄组的婴儿们的大脑在听到外语声音时比听到母语时触发动作机能更显著。研究还发现了嬰儿是如何识别母语和外语的差异的。

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