2012年職稱英語理工類閱讀理解練習題(40)

Easy Learning 容易的學習

　　Students should be jealous. Not only do babies get to doze their days away, but they've also mastered the fine art of learning in their sleep.

　　By the time babies are a year old they can recognize a lot of sounds and even simple words. Marie Cheour at the university of Turku in Finland suspected that they might progress this fast because they learn language while they sleep as well as when they are awake.

　　To test the theory, Cheour and their colleagues studied 45 newborn babies in the first days of their lives. They exposed all the infants to an hour of Finnish vowel sounds ― one that sounds like "oo", another like "ee" and a third boundary vowel peculiar to Finnish and similar languages that sounds like something in between. EEG recording of the infants brains before and after the session showed that the newborns could not distinguish the sounds.

　　Fifteen of the babies then went back with their mothers, while the rest were split into two sleep-study groups. One group was exposed throughout their night-time sleeping hours to the same three vowels, while the others listened to the other, easier-to-distinguish vowel sounds.

　　When tested in the morning, and again in the evening, the babies who'd heard the tricky boundary vowels all night showed brainwave activity indicating that they could now recognize this sound. They could identify the sound even when its pitch was changed, while none of the other babies could pick up the boundary vowel at all.

　　Cheour doesn't know how babies accomplish this nighttime learning, but she suspects that the special ability might indicate that unlike adults, babies don't "turn off" their cerebral cortex while they sleep. The skill probably fades in the course of the first years of life, she adds ― so forget the idea that you can pick up the tricky French vowels as an adult just by slipping a language tape under your pillow. But while it may not help grown-ups, Cheour is hoping to use the sleeping hours to give remedial help to babies who are genetically at risk of language disorders.

　　學生們應該感到嫉妒。嬰兒們不僅整天睡覺，而且他們還能在睡眠中掌握學習的藝術。

　　當嬰兒一周歲時他們可以識別出很多聲音，甚至簡單的單詞。芬蘭Turku大學的Marie Cheour懷疑他們進步這么快的原因可能是不僅在醒著時而且在睡覺時也在學語言。

　　為了檢驗這個理論，Cheour和她的同事們在45個新生兒生命最初的幾天里對他們進行了研究。他們讓所有的嬰兒聽一個小時的芬蘭元音――其中一個類似“oo”，另一個類似“ee”，還有一個芬蘭語和類似語言特有的邊界音，聽起來像兩者之間的聲音。在此之前和之后的嬰兒大腦的電腦圖記錄顯示新生兒不能辨別這幾個聲音。

　　然后，其中15個嬰兒隨他們的母親回去了，而另外的嬰兒被分成兩個睡覺時學習小組。一個組的嬰兒夜間睡覺的時候還放著同三個元音的錄音，而其他的嬰兒只聽其他的較容易區(qū)分的元音。

　　在早晚各進行了測試之后，那些整晚都在聽難識別的邊界音的嬰兒顯示出的腦波活動說明他們現(xiàn)在能夠識別這個新聲音了。甚至當這個音的音調(diào)變化時他們?nèi)阅軌蜃R別出來，而其他的嬰兒沒有一個能識別這個邊界音。

　　Cheour不知道嬰兒是如何完成這個夜間學習的，但是她懷疑這種特殊能力說明跟大人不一樣，嬰兒睡覺時沒有把大腦皮層“關掉”。她接著說，這種技能可能在生命的最初過程中漸漸消失，因此應忘掉這樣一個想法，即：你作為一個成年人只需要把一盤語言錄音帶塞在枕頭下面就可以學會法語中一些麻煩的音。但是，雖然這并不能幫助成年人，Cheour希望這些睡眠時間可用來幫助那些從基因上來說會發(fā)生語言障礙的嬰兒。

　　★1).Babies can learn language even in their sleep.-R

　　★2).An infant can recognize a lot of vowels by the time he or she is a year old.-N

　　★3).Finish vowels are easy to distinguish.-N

　　★4).The three vowels mentioned in this article are all Finnish sounds.- R

　　★5).The study shows that the infant’s cerebral cortex is working while he is asleep.-R

　　★6).If an adult wants to learn a language faster, he can put a language tape under his pillow.-W

　　★7).Cheour’s finding is worthless.-W

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