Findings of Baby Research
The new research is sure to confuse new parents-see, Junior is a genius-but it's more than just an academic exercise. Armed with the new information, pediatricians (儿科医生) are starting to change the way they evaluate their youngest patients. In addition to tracking physical development, they are now focusing much more deeply on emotional advancement. The research shows how powerful emotional well-being is to a child's future health. A baby who fails to meet certain key "emotional milestones" may have trouble learning to speak, read and, later, do well in school. By reading emotional responses, doctors have begun to discover ways to tell if a baby as young as 3 months is showing early signs of possible psychological disorders, including depression, anxiety, learning disabilities and perhaps autism.
One of the earliest emotions that even tiny babies display is, admirably enough, empathy. In fact, concern for others may be hard-wired into babies' brains. Place a newborn down next to another crying infant, and chances are, both babies will soon be wailing (悲叹) away. "People have always known that babies cry when they hear other babies cry, " says Martin Hoffman, a psychology professor at New York University who did the first studies on infant empathy in the 1970s. "The question was, why are they crying?" Does it mean that the baby is truly concerned for his fellow human, or just annoyed by the racket? A recent study conducted in Italy, which built on Hoffman's own work, has largely settled the question. Researchers played for infants tapes of other babies' crying. As predicted, that was enough to start the tears flowing. But when researchers played babies, recordings of their own cries, they rarely began crying themselves. The verdict:"there is some empathy in place, right from birth, " Hoffman says. The intensity of the emotion tends to fade over time. Babies older than 6 months no longer cry but grimace (作苦相) at the discomfort of others. By 13 to 15 months, babies tend to take matters into their own hands. They'll try to comfort a crying playmate. "What I find most charming is when, even if the two mothers are present, they'll bring their own mother over to help, " Hoffman says.
Part of that empathy may come from another early-baby skill, the ability to discern emotions from the facial expressions of the people around them. "Most textbooks still say that babies younger than 6 months don't recognize emotions, " says Diane Montague, assistant professor of psychology at LaSalle University in Philadelphia. To put that belief to the test, Montague came up with a twist on every infant's favorite game, and recruited dozens of 4-month-olds to play along. She began by peeking around a cloth with a big smile on her face. Predictably, the babies were delighted, and stared at her intently-the time-tested way to tell if a baby is interested. On the fourth peek, though, Montague emerged with a sad look on her face. This time, the response was much different. "They not only looked away, "she says, but wouldn't look back even when she began smiling again. Refusing to make eye contact is a classic baby sign of distress. An angry face got their attention once again, but their faces showed no pleasure. "They seemed primed to be alert, even vigilant, "Montague says. "I realize that's speculative in regard to infants. . . I think it shows that babies younger than 6 months find meaning in expressions. "
They are also far more sophisticated intellectually than we once believed. Babies, as young as 4 months, have advanced powers of deduction and an ability to understand the intricate patterns. They have a surprisingly visual palette(燃料，调色板), which enables them to notice small differences, especially in faces, that adults and older children lose the ability to see. Until a baby is 3 months old, he can recognize a photograph of his mother just as quickly as a photo in which everything is in the right place.
Challenges and Dangers of Baby Research
This might be a good place to pause for a word about the challenges and dangers of baby research. Since the subjects can't speak for themselves, figuring out what's going on inside their heads is often a matter of reading their faces and body language. If this seems speculative, it's not. Over decades of trial and error, researchers have fine-tuned their observation skills and zeroed in on numerous consistent baby responses to various stimuli: how long they stare at an object, what they reach out for and what makes them recoil in fear or disgust can often tell experienced researchers everything they need to know. More recently, scientists have added EEGs and laser eye tracking, which allow more precise readings.
1. The passage is mainly about those researches that focus on the emotional and intellectual abilities of those very young babies.
2. The purpose of the experiment on Victoria Bateman is to find out how important the mother's love is to her baby.
3. In the experiment, Victoria Bateman cried because she thought that her mother didn't love her any more.
4. Only through reading emotional responses can doctors tell whether a 3-month baby will get possible psychological disorders.
5. Pediatricians are now paying less attention to physical development of their baby patients but more to _________________.
6. Hoffman's study revealed that babies are born to show other crying babies _________________.
7. The findings of Diane's test demonstrated the baby's ability to recognize _________________.
8. It is amazing to find that the visual palette of a baby helps him to notice _________________.
9. As for the challenges, those researchers have to obtain those findings about babies' mind by reading _________________.
10. In order to gain more precise readings about babies' mind, scientists have adopted the skills of EEGs and _________________.
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