剑桥雅思13阅读Test3Passage2原文翻译

这篇文章的主旨内容是关于婴儿说话对其发展的影响的一些科学研究。其中提到了几个方面：婴儿与父母互动时的语言特征、早期接触语言对大脑的益处、父母婴儿之间的互动方式、父母在婴儿说话中的作用、婴儿对同龄人声音的偏好以及婴儿大脑对语言的学习反应等。这些研究有助于我们进一步理解婴儿语言发展的机制和影响因素。

段落A

The typical way of talking to a baby – High-pitched, exaggerated and repetitious – 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.

 

段落A：与婴儿交谈的典型方式 – 高音调、夸张和重复 – 令语言学家着迷，他们希望了解”婴儿说话”如何影响学习。大多数婴儿在还在子宫中发展听力，这促使一些有希望的父母在怀孕时给自己的肚子播放古典音乐。一些研究甚至表明，婴儿在出生前10周就开始听成人的说话了，获取到家庭母语的基本构建模块。

段落B

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 infant-directed speech influence a baby’s development? Here are some recent studies that explore the science behind baby talk.

 

段落B：早期接触语言似乎对大脑有益 – 例如，研究表明在双语环境中长大的婴儿更擅长学习如何优先处理信息。那么，婴儿说话这种甜蜜而有时荒谬的声音如何影响婴儿的发展呢？以下是一些探索婴儿说话背后科学的最新研究。

段落C

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 VanDam 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,’ VanDam 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.

 

段落C：根据一项新研究，父亲们并不像母亲们那样经常或以相同的方式使用婴儿说话，而这是完全可以接受的。华盛顿州立大学斯波坎分校的Mark VanDam和同事们装备父母们的录音设备和语音识别软件，研究他们在一天正常活动中与孩子互动的方式。VanDam解释道：”我们发现母亲们做的正是你所期望的，而且这已经被多次描述过。但我们发现父亲们没有做同样的事情。当他们和孩子说话时，他们的音调或基频并没有提高。”他们的角色可能根源于所谓的”桥梁假说”，该假说可以追溯到1975年。它认为父亲们使用较少的家庭语言，为他们的孩子提供与公共场合中所听到的说话方式之间的桥梁。VanDam说：”这个想法是，孩子可以与妈妈练习一种特定的说话方式，然后与爸爸练习另一种说话方式，这样孩子就拥有更广泛的说话方式来练习。”

段落D

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 more adult talk or standard speech,’ says Nairán Ramírez-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.’

 

段落D：华盛顿大学和康涅狄格大学的科学家们收集了数千个父母与婴儿之间的30秒对话片段，并为26个婴儿穿上可记录语言和声音的记录衣，记录了一个典型的八小时活动。研究发现，父母使用的婴儿说话越多，婴儿开始大声呀呀学语的频率就越高。当研究人员在这些婴儿两岁时再次进行观察时，他们发现频繁的婴儿说话显著提高了词汇量，无论社会经济地位如何。康涅狄格大学的Nairán Ramírez-Esparza表示：”那些经常听到大量婴儿说话的婴儿比听到更多成人说话或标准语言的婴儿说得更多。”

段落E

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 Université 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.’

 

段落E：另一项研究表明，父母可能希望让他们的孩子互相交流，这样他们可以更多地与同龄人呀呀学语。蒙特利尔大学和魁北克大学的研究人员发现，婴儿似乎更喜欢听同龄人而不是成人说话 – 这可能就是为什么婴儿说话成为父母普遍使用的工具的原因。他们使用了一种特殊的合成设备播放重复的元音声音，模仿成年女性或其他婴儿发出的声音。这样，只观察了听觉提示的影响。然后，团队测量了每种声音类型对婴儿注意力的持续时间。他们发现，”婴儿”声音的吸引力几乎高出其他声音近40%。婴儿的声音还引发了听觉婴儿中更多的反应，如微笑或嘴唇动，这近似于发声。团队推测，对其他婴儿声音的吸引可能有助于启动导致语言发展的学习过程。研究合著者Linda Polka表示：”这可能是知觉中的某种声音特性吸引了他们的注意力。或者因为他们开始自己发声的能力，所以他们对这种特定类型的声音非常感兴趣。我们这里只是做了一些推测，但它可能引起他们的注意力，因为他们认识到它是他们可能发出的声音。”

段落F

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 brain-activation 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.

 段落F：在一项发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上的研究中，研究人员对57名七个月和十一个半月大的婴儿进行了一些音节的测听，包括他们的母语（英语）和一种非本国语言（西班牙语）。他们将婴儿放置在脑活动扫描仪中，记录了一个指导产生语言的运动活动的大脑区域的活动。结果表明，倾听婴儿说话激发了婴儿大脑开始练习语言技能。合著者Patricia Kuhl表示：”当婴儿只是在倾听时，大脑中出现运动区域的激活是重要的，因为这意味着婴儿的大脑从一开始就在试图回答，这暗示着七个月大的婴儿的大脑已经试图找出如何产生词汇所需的正确动作。”另一个有趣的发现是，虽然七个月大的婴儿对所有语音声音都有反应，无论语言为何种类，但较大的婴儿大脑在非母语声音的运动激活方面的工作更加努力，而不是母语声音。这项研究可能还揭示了婴儿如何辨别母语和其他语言之间的差异的过程。