VOA慢速英语20060822b

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS - Women Are Able to Read More in a Man's Face Than He Might ThinkBy Brianna Blake

Broadcast: Tuesday, August 22, 2006

VOICE ONE:

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Faith Lapidus. This week -- learn about three separate studies that all involve faces. One has to do with facial blindness -- scientists have found that this disorder¹ is more common than they thought ...

VOICE ONE:


Reading faces: There is more than meets the eye

The second study examines the ability of women to read a man's face ...

VOICE TWO:

And the third compares the ability of men and women to look at a face and recognize different emotions.

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VOICE ONE:

Some people never forget a face. Some never remember them.

Facial blindness is the inability to recognize the faces of people you have seen in the past or even recently. The scientific name for this condition is prosopagnosia.

Facial blindness can happen in rare cases after a stroke or a brain injury. There is also a genetic³ form which scientists have considered even rarer.

But a new study suggests that the congenital form of facial blindness is much more common than researchers have believed. And the scientists say the findings provide evidence that this disorder almost always runs in families.

VOICE TWO:

A team led by researchers at the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Muenster, in Germany, did the study. They tested almost seven hundred students from local schools. The students answered a series of questions to identify if they had facial blindness.

The researchers found that seventeen students had the condition. Fourteen of those students agreed to have their family members also take part in the study. The researchers found that each one of the fourteen had at least one immediate⁴ family member with facial blindness.

The scientists published the first report on how common the disorder is. The report appeared recently in the American Journal of Medical Genetics.

An abnormality in a single gene² is believed to cause this condition. The scientists have not yet found the gene.

VOICE ONE:

Many people with facial blindness recognize close family members. But they can find it difficult to follow along with things like television shows because they do not recognize the actors' faces. In extreme cases, people cannot even recognize their own face in a picture of a group.

Some people with facial blindness avoid social situations. Others use excuses like they need new glasses. No cure is known for facial blindness. People who have it usually develop other methods to recognize people. They pay close attention to other details, like voices, clothing, body shape or the way a person walks.

There is a Web site where you can learn more about facial blindness. The site is operated by research centers at Harvard University in the United States and University College London. The address is faceblind.org.

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VOICE TWO:

You are listening to SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

The next study we look at examines the ability of women to tell some things about a man just by looking at him.

This recent study found that a man's face can tell a woman if he is interested in children. The researchers say women are also able to rate the amount of male sex hormone⁵ that a man has just by reading his face.

The research took place at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Santa Barbara. The findings appeared in the Proceedings⁶ of the Royal Society.

VOICE ONE:

A group of twenty-nine female students at the California school looked at photographs of men's faces. The young women had to rate what they believed to be the men's interest in children and their manliness⁷. The women also had to rate their own interest in each man. The women were asked if they would be interested in the man as a short-term lover or a long-term partner.

The men in the pictures came from different ethnic⁸ backgrounds and were told to have a neutral expression.

Researchers in Chicago used thirty-nine male college students in the study. They tested them to see how much they liked children. The young men looked at pictures of babies and adults and had to say which pictures interested them more. Five showed no interest in the babies. Some showed little or no interest in the adults.

The scientists also tested saliva⁹ from the men to measure how much testosterone each man had.

VOICE TWO:

The researchers compared the results from the women and the men.

The women were able to tell from the photos of the men which ones had high testosterone levels and which ones liked children the most. Twenty of the twenty-nine women correctly identified the men who liked babies. And nineteen of the women correctly identified the men who showed the least interest in children.

So what about when it came to choosing which men appealed most to the women? The study found that the women were more interested in men with high testosterone levels for short-term relationships. The women considered these men to look more masculine¹⁰.

Earlier research has suggested that a well-defined¹¹ jaw¹² and thick facial hair are among the signals of high testosterone levels.

The men more likely to be chosen for long-term relationships were those who appeared to like children. The men seen as most interested in children were the same ones who had expressed the most interest in children in the picture test.

VOICE ONE:

Some people might not find these results all that surprising. But the researchers were surprised at how well women can judge testosterone levels and interest in children. Still, they are not sure what it is exactly about men's faces or their expressions that signal these things to women.

Five female graduate students also looked at the pictures of the men. These women had to rate how happy or angry the men looked. The men who were more interested in babies were more likely to be rated as looking happy.

In any case, the researchers say they found no connection between how much testosterone a man had and how much he liked babies.

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VOICE TWO:

A third recent study looked at the way people recognize emotion in facial expressions. For this study, researchers showed pictures of faces to seventy-eight men and seventy-eight women. Each face expressed one of six emotions. These were anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness and surprise.

The researchers asked the study group to identify the different expressions. They also noted¹³ the amount of time it took each person to identify the emotion.

The researchers found that anger was the emotion most quickly recognized, a fact that has also been shown in earlier studies. They also found the men were especially quick to identify the faces of angry males. The women were quicker to recognize other expressions, like happiness or sadness.

VOICE ONE:

The researchers believe their study provides evidence that skills for identifying facial expressions have developed differently in men and women. Men were more likely to face a deadly threat from another man than from a woman. So being able to quickly identify the face of an angry man would have been helpful for survival¹⁴.

Scientists from the United States and Australia led the study. The findings appeared in Current Biology.

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VOICE TWO:

Finally we have one more study to tell you about. This one involves people who at times become uncontrollably angry. Scientists call it intermittent¹⁵ explosive disorder. They say it is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and at the University of Chicago did the study. They used information from a study of more than nine thousand adults in the United States. They say intermittent explosive disorder is much more common than has been recognized. They say it affects as many as seven percent of adults at some point in their lifetimes, depending on how widely it is defined.

Doctors say it is made worse for some by stress from bad drivers, crowded roads and busy lives.

The findings appeared in the Archives of General Psychiatry¹⁶. More than eighty percent of the people with the disorder also had depression, anxiety or problems with drugs or alcohol. But less than thirty percent were ever treated for their anger. The researchers suggest that early treatment of anger might prevent some of the other disorders¹⁷.

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VOICE ONE:

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written and produced by Brianna Blake. Transcripts¹⁸ and archives of our shows are at www.unsv.com. I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Faith Lapidus. We hope you can join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

1 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

2 gene   

n.遗传因子，基因

参考例句：

• A single gene may have many effects.单一基因可能具有很多种效应。
• The targeting of gene therapy has been paid close attention.其中基因治疗的靶向性是值得密切关注的问题之一。

3 genetic   

adj.遗传的，遗传学的

参考例句：

• It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
• Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。

4 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

5 hormone   

n.荷尔蒙，激素，内分泌

参考例句：

• Hormone implants are used as growth boosters.激素植入物被用作生长辅助剂。
• This hormone interacts closely with other hormones in the body.这种荷尔蒙与体內其他荷尔蒙紧密地相互作用。

6 proceedings   

n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报

参考例句：

• He was released on bail pending committal proceedings. 他交保获释正在候审。
• to initiate legal proceedings against sb 对某人提起诉讼

7 manliness   

刚毅

参考例句：

• She was really fond of his strength, his wholesome looks, his manliness. 她真喜欢他的坚强，他那健康的容貌，他的男子气概。
• His confidence, his manliness and bravery, turn his wit into wisdom. 他的自信、男子气概和勇敢将他的风趣变为智慧。

8 ethnic   

adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的

参考例句：

• This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏，这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
• The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。

9 saliva   

n.唾液，口水

参考例句：

• He wiped a dribble of saliva from his chin.他擦掉了下巴上的几滴口水。
• Saliva dribbled from the baby's mouth.唾液从婴儿的嘴里流了出来。

10 masculine   

adj.男性的，男子的，男子气的

参考例句：

• She has a rather masculine voice.她的声音有点男性化。
• The ceremony is exclusively masculine.典礼上清一色的全是男人。

11 defined   

adj 定义的; 清晰的

参考例句：

• These categories are not well defined. 这些类别划分得不太明确。
• The powers of a judge are defined by law. 法官的权限是由法律规定的。

12 jaw   

n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训

参考例句：

• He delivered a right hook to his opponent's jaw.他给了对方下巴一记右钩拳。
• A strong square jaw is a sign of firm character.强健的方下巴是刚毅性格的标志。

13 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

14 survival   

n.留住生命，生存，残存，幸存者

参考例句：

• The doctor told my wife I had a fifty-fifty chance of survival.医生告诉我的妻子，说我活下去的可能性只有50%。
• The old man was a survival of a past age.这位老人是上一代的遗老。

15 intermittent   

adj.间歇的，断断续续的

参考例句：

• Did you hear the intermittent sound outside?你听见外面时断时续的声音了吗？
• In the daytime intermittent rains freshened all the earth.白天里，时断时续地下着雨，使整个大地都生气勃勃了。

16 psychiatry   

n.精神病学，精神病疗法

参考例句：

• The study appeared in the Amercian science Journal of Psychiatry.这个研究发表在美国精神病学的杂志上。
• A physician is someone who specializes in psychiatry.精神病专家是专门从事精神病治疗的人。

17 disorders   

n.混乱( disorder的名词复数 )；凌乱；骚乱；（身心、机能）失调

参考例句：

• Reports of anorexia and other eating disorders are on the increase. 据报告，厌食症和其他饮食方面的功能紊乱发生率正在不断增长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The announcement led to violent civil disorders. 这项宣布引起剧烈的骚乱。 来自《简明英汉词典》

18 transcripts   

n.抄本（ transcript的名词复数 ）；转写本；文字本；副本

参考例句：

• Like mRNA, both tRNA and rRNA are transcripts of chromosomal DNA. tRNA及rRNA同mRNA一样，都是染色体DNA的转录产物。 来自辞典例句
• You can't take the transfer students'exam without your transcripts. 没有成绩证明书，你就不能参加转学考试。 来自辞典例句