【英语语言学习】治疗有助于问题少年反思自己的行为

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

 

Police departments and community groups are always looking for ways to reduce crime. Much of the time though their success is not measured scientifically, so we don't really know what works and what doesn't. Well, at the University of Chicago, researchers actually tested a crime intervention¹ and they found something pretty interesting. To tell us about it, we're joined by NPR's Shankar Vedantam who comes by regularly to tell us about new social science research. Shankar, welcome back.

 

SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE²: Hi, David.

 

GREENE: OK. So tell us, this is the city of Chicago. I mean, it's a city that has really struggled recently to reduce crime. What are these researchers up to?

 

VEDANTAM: Well, the researchers first decided³ to explore how homicide actually takes place and to see if the way it takes place lines up with our intuitions. So Harold Pollack at the University of Chicago, he conducted what he calls social autopsies⁴ on every youth homicide that took place in the city of Chicago in a year. And what he found was that murder doesn't happen the way we think it happens or they way it happens on the "The Sopranos" or "The Wire."

 

You know, it usually isn't premeditated or aimed at getting something or settling a score. I spoke⁵ with Jens Ludwig. He's the director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. Here's how he described it to me.

 

JENS LUDWIG: Most serious violent events are almost Seinfeld-ian in their origins. Someone saying something stupid to someone else and that escalating⁶ and basically turning into a tragedy because someone happened to have a handgun in their waistband at the time.

 

GREENE: I guess one unresolved debate in the country is whether or not taking the gun out of the hand of this person would prevent this tragedy from happening.

 

VEDANTAM: So, sure, David. I mean, the whole debate about gun control is a big debate, but Pollack and Ludwig and their colleagues decided to try a different intervention that was aimed at how these kids think. So they ran an experiment with about 2,800 kids from grades 7 to 10, all drawn⁷ from high-crime areas. Half of them went through a program that was designed to help the kids to stop and think, and half did not.

 

And when they finished the program they found that the arrest rates for the kids who went through the program dropped by 44 percent.

 

GREENE: What exactly were they being taught? What's the intervention?

 

VEDANTAM: So it really is a form of psychotherapy that people call cognitive⁸ behavior therapy. And the idea is you need to stop and think about the way you think. And I'm actually going to give you an example, David. This actually comes from one of the interventions⁹ that they did with these kids. I brought in a granola bar into the studio right now.

 

GREENE: Thank you for that.

 

VEDANTAM: And I have it in my fist. And let's say you want this granola bar. How would you get it out of me?

 

GREENE: I would say, Shankar, hi, I'm kind of hungry right now. I wouldn't mind having that granola bar if you're not going to eat it yourself.

 

VEDANTAM: Here you go, David.

 

GREENE: Hey, thank you. I appreciate that.

 

VEDANTAM: Here's the thing. Not one of the kids who went through this program ever thought of doing what you just did.

 

GREENE: Why?

 

VEDANTAM: So they way they played this game, the kids were trying to get a ball out of a partner's hand and when they were told that the partner had it in his fist, they went after the partner and they fought for the ball and they brawled¹¹ over it. And after about five minutes of this, the program leader stopped them and asked them a question. And here's how Jens Ludwig explained it to me.

 

LUDWIG: Why didn't you ask the other kid to give you the rubber ball? And then the kids will say things like, oh, if I would've asked, he would have thought I was a punk. Then, the group leader will turn to the partner and say what would you have done had this other kid asked you to give him the rubber ball? And usually the kid will say I would have just given him the rubber ball. What do I care?

 

GREENE: So it's a way of helping¹² these kids understand that they're not going to be perceived necessarily the way they think they will be.

 

VEDANTAM: Exactly. I mean, so the central idea of cognitive behavior therapy is that there are these unconscious patterns to our thinking that when we expect an interaction to be hostile, we're going to be very aggressive coming into the interaction. So the goal is to train kids to slow down, not to leap to conclusions, to question your own assumptions.

 

You know, and I have to give you credit, David, because you didn't leap to the assumption that I was going to be resistant¹³ in giving you the granola bar.

 

GREENE: We didn't brawl¹⁰ in the studio. That's a good thing.

 

(LAUGHTER)

 

VEDANTAM: But I have to tell you there's also good news and bad news here, David. The good news is the intervention was very successful, but the bad news is one year after the program ended, the arrest rates of the kids who went through the program was no different than the arrest rates of the kids who didn't go through the program.

 

GREENE: Oh, that's sad. So is there some way to basically extend the success here?

 

VEDANTAM: So I think they're going to test different interventions, David. But Ludwig told me that even in just the year of the program, the benefits of the program far outweighed¹⁴ the costs. And not just in financial terms, but in long-term human terms. You know, someone at the Cook County Juvenile¹⁵ Detention¹⁶ Center told him, look, 20 percent of the kids who are here probably need to be here because they're dangerous.

 

For 80 percent of the other kids, they're here because of a single incident. If I could give them back 10 minutes of their lives, they wouldn't be here because they could make a different choice in that 10 minutes. And that's what this kind of program's designed to achieve.

 

GREENE: Shankar, really interesting. Thanks for coming in.

 

VEDANTAM: Thanks, David.

 

GREENE: That's Shankar Vedantam. He regularly joins us to talk about interesting social science research. You can follow him on Twitter @hiddenbrain. And while you're doing that you can also follow this program @morningedition and @nprgreene.

 

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

 

GREENE: This is NPR News.

1 intervention   

n.介入，干涉，干预

参考例句：

• The government's intervention in this dispute will not help.政府对这场争论的干预不会起作用。
• Many people felt he would be hostile to the idea of foreign intervention.许多人觉得他会反对外来干预。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

4 autopsies   

n.尸体解剖( autopsy的名词复数 )；验尸；现场验证；实地观察

参考例句：

• Autopsies cannot be performed and thus no recent histological examinations have been reported. 不能进行尸体解剖，因此没有新近的组织学检查的报道。 来自辞典例句
• I told you to supervise autopsies, not to set up a lot of fancy rules. 我叫你监督解剖室，不是去制定一些空想的规定。 来自辞典例句

5 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

6 escalating   

v.（使）逐步升级( escalate的现在分词 )；（使）逐步扩大；（使）更高；（使）更大

参考例句：

• The cost of living is escalating. 生活费用在迅速上涨。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The cost of living is escalating in the country. 这个国家的生活费用在上涨。 来自辞典例句

7 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

8 cognitive   

adj.认知的，认识的，有感知的

参考例句：

• As children grow older,their cognitive processes become sharper.孩子们越长越大，他们的认知过程变得更为敏锐。
• The cognitive psychologist is like the tinker who wants to know how a clock works.认知心理学者倒很像一个需要通晓钟表如何运转的钟表修理匠。

9 interventions   

n.介入，干涉，干预( intervention的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Economic analysis of government interventions deserves detailed discussion. 政府对经济的干预应该给予充分的论述。 来自辞典例句
• The judge's frequent interventions made a mockery of justice. 法官的屡屡干预是对正义的践踏。 来自互联网

10 brawl   

n.大声争吵，喧嚷；v.吵架，对骂

参考例句：

• They had nothing better to do than brawl in the street.他们除了在街上斗殴做不出什么好事。
• I don't want to see our two neighbours engaged in a brawl.我不希望我们两家吵架吵得不可开交。

11 brawled   

打架，争吵( brawl的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The river brawled over the rapids. 河水哗哗地流过湍滩。
• Two gangs of youths brawled on the dance floor of the ferry. 两伙青年在渡轮的舞池里打起来了。

12 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

13 resistant   

adj.(to)抵抗的，有抵抗力的

参考例句：

• Many pests are resistant to the insecticide.许多害虫对这种杀虫剂有抵抗力。
• They imposed their government by force on the resistant population.他们以武力把自己的统治强加在持反抗态度的人民头上。

14 outweighed   

v.在重量上超过( outweigh的过去式和过去分词 )；在重要性或价值方面超过

参考例句：

• This boxer outweighed by his opponent 20 pounds. 这个拳击选手体重比他的对手重20磅。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She outweighed me by ten pounds, and sometimes she knocked me down. 她的体重超过我十磅，有时竟把我撞倒。 来自百科语句

15 juvenile   

n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的

参考例句：

• For a grown man he acted in a very juvenile manner.身为成年人，他的行为举止显得十分幼稚。
• Juvenile crime is increasing at a terrifying rate.青少年犯罪正在以惊人的速度增长。

16 detention   

n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下

参考例句：

• He was kept in detention by the police.他被警察扣留了。
• He was in detention in connection with the bribery affair.他因与贿赂事件有牵连而被拘留了。