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【英语语言学习】宝宝们如何学习

时间:2016-09-20 05:41来源:互联网 提供网友:yajing   字体: [ ]
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From VOA Learning English, this is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in Special English. I’m June Simms.
 
And I’m Christopher Cruise1. Today, we examine recent findings about how intelligence develops in babies. We look at when and how babies learn, and the importance of early contact with languages.
 
Not long ago, many people believed that babies only wanted food and to be kept warm and dry. Some people thought babies were not able to learn things until they were five or six months old. But doctors in the United States now say babies begin learning on their first day of life.
 
The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is a federal government agency. The Institute says babies are strongly influenced by their environment. It says a baby will smile if his or her mother does something the baby likes.
 
A baby learns to get the best care possible by smiling to please her mother or other caregiver. This is how babies learn to connect and communicate with other people.
 
The researchers say this ability to learn exists in a baby even before birth. They say newborn babies can recognize and understand sounds they heard while they were still developing inside their mothers.
 
Recently, an American study of 112 babies found they learned better when they were sitting up, not lying down. The babies appeared to learn better whether they were sitting up on their own, sitting in seats or helped to sit up.
 
Researchers with North Dakota State University and Texas A&M organized the study. The researchers say sitting up had what they called a “profound” and “significant” effect on the babies’ ability to learn about objects. They say the body position may be linked to development in the brain.
 
One organizer of the study says babies can pay more attention to exploring an object if they do not have to worry about balancing themselves. A report on the study appeared in the journal Developmental Psychology2.
 
Underweight babies born with a shortage3 of the mineral iron may develop problems with thinking and behavior. Studies have shown that adding iron to the babies’ food prevents developmental problems in more than one-third of those born with an iron deficiency4.
 
Magnus Domellof heads the pediatrics department at Umea University in Sweden. He says low birth-weight babies -- those weighing from 2,000 to 2,500 grams -- look normal. Yet about 30 percent of them are iron-deficient at six months of age. Mr. Domellof says 10 percent of them develop a condition called iron-deficient anemia5. He says that as the children get older, iron deficiency can lead to behavioral disorders7 compared to babies treated with iron supplements.
 
Mr. Domellof and his team studied 285 low-weight newborns. They gave the babies iron droplets8 every day for six months. Another group of 90 infants received drops of sugar water that contained no iron.
 
The boys and girls were examined three years later. Only three percent of those who got iron drops showed behavioral and cognitive9 problems. But 13 percent of those who got the sugar water had problems. The lack of iron did not seem to affect the results of intelligence tests taken by the children.
 
Mr. Domellof admits his study involved a small number of children. But he says it is the first study to show a direct link between iron deficiency and development-related attention and emotional problems in low birth-weight babies. He says such babies are often ignored in research because they do not appear to have problems.
 
“They are about five percent of all infants in the U.S. They are quite often neglected in studies, even though the, the few studies that have been performed actually show that these babies are at increased risk for behavioral problems, for cognitive problems, school problems, like that.”
 
Mr. Domellof says even if a breast-feeding mother is taking iron supplements, that iron does not pass to her child through her breast milk. Iron-deficient children must take iron supplements directly with their food. He plans to examine the boys and girls from the earlier study in a few years to see if their intelligence test results have been affected10.
 
The World Health Organization says iron deficiency is the most-common micronutrient disorder6 worldwide. WHO officials also say iron deficiency is a leading cause of anemia. About two billion people suffer from the disorder, and 40 percent of preschool-children are believed to be anemic. Low iron levels are partly involved in 20 percent of maternal11 deaths.
 
The report on low birth-weight babies was published in the journal Pediatrics.
 
Experts say the first three years of a child’s life are the most intensive period of language and speech development. This is the time when the brain is developing. Language and communication skills are believed to develop best in an environment that is rich with sounds and sights. Experts say children should repeatedly hear the speech and language of other people.
 
America’s National Institutes of Health says evidence suggests there are important periods of speech and language development in children. The ability to learn a language will be more difficult if these periods pass without early contact with a language.
 
The first signs of communication happen during the first few days of life, when a baby learns that crying will bring food and attention. Research shows that most children recognize the general sounds of their native language by six months of age. By that time, a baby usually begins to make sounds. These sounds become a kind of nonsense speech over time.
 
By the end of their first year, most children are able to say a few simple words, although they may not understand the meaning of the words. By 18 months of age, most children can say between eight and 10 words. By two years of age, most children are able to make simple statements. By ages three, four and five, the number of words a child can understand quickly increases. It is at these ages that children begin to understand the rules of language.
 
Some children grow up in homes where more than one language is spoken. Understanding two languages can help children as they grow older. However, studies showing there is a more immediate12 effect of bilingualism on babies’ brains.
 
Researchers at the University of Washington organized one of the studies. They measured brain activity to compare babies in bilingual families to those in homes where just one language was spoken. Researchers called these single language families, “monolingual” homes.
 
The researchers studied babies who were between six and 12 months old. The babies were not yet saying words in any language. The youngest monolingual babies were able to recognize a difference between a language used at home and another language. But by 10 to 12 months of age, the monolingual babies were not identifying the sounds of the second language -- only the main language spoken in their home.
 
By comparison, the bilingual babies did not differentiate13 sounds of different languages spoken to them between the ages of six and nine months. But between 10 and 12 months, they could identify the different sounds of both languages.
 
Another study has shown the effect of early education on future learning abilities. The study followed more than 1,300 children from birth through the ages of 10 or 11. It found that children who received higher-quality care before starting school had better language skills by those ages than children who had lower-quality care.
 
The study is said to be the largest, longest-lasting and most-complete study of child care in the United States. The children studied were born around 1991 in 10 areas. Researchers examined the quality and amount of child care the children received until they were four and one-half years old.
 
The researchers then examined each child’s performance in school and social development and looked at the quality of classroom education and parenting. They found that the children who had received higher-quality child care showed better ability in tests of language skills.
 
The study found that the link between high quality child care and better test results continued as the children grew older. It also found that the children’s ability was not dependent on the amount of time they had spent in child care.

点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 cruise 2nhzw     
v.巡航,航游,缓慢巡行;n.海上航游
参考例句:
  • They went on a cruise to Tenerife.他们乘船去特纳利夫岛。
  • She wants to cruise the canals of France in a barge.她想乘驳船游览法国的运河。
2 psychology U0Wze     
n.心理,心理学,心理状态
参考例句:
  • She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
  • He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。
3 shortage 1yrwh     
n.缺少,缺乏,不足
参考例句:
  • The city is suffering a desperate shortage of water.这个城市严重缺水。
  • The heart of the problem is a shortage of funds.问题的关键是缺乏经费。
4 deficiency xmBzv     
n.缺乏,不足,缺点,缺陷
参考例句:
  • During the war children suffered from a deficiency of food.战争期间孩子们遭受缺乏食物之苦。
  • Fortunately,color deficiency is not a serious medical problem.幸运的是,色盲并不是一种严重的医学问题。
5 anemia joGy3     
n.贫血,贫血症
参考例句:
  • The doctors analyzed the blood sample for anemia. 医生们分析了贫血的血样。
  • I was put on iron tablets for my anemia.我曾因贫血吃补铁药片。
6 disorder Et1x4     
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。
7 disorders 6e49dcafe3638183c823d3aa5b12b010     
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》
8 droplets 3c55b5988da2d40be7a87f6b810732d2     
n.小滴( droplet的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • Droplets of sweat were welling up on his forehead. 他额头上冒出了滴滴汗珠。 来自辞典例句
  • In constrast, exhaled smoke contains relatively large water droplets and appears white. 相反,从人嘴里呼出的烟则包含相当大的水滴,所以呈白色。 来自辞典例句
9 cognitive Uqwz0     
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。
10 affected TzUzg0     
adj.不自然的,假装的
参考例句:
  • She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
  • His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。
11 maternal 57Azi     
adj.母亲的,母亲般的,母系的,母方的
参考例句:
  • He is my maternal uncle.他是我舅舅。
  • The sight of the hopeless little boy aroused her maternal instincts.那个绝望的小男孩的模样唤起了她的母性。
12 immediate aapxh     
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。
13 differentiate cm3yc     
vi.(between)区分;vt.区别;使不同
参考例句:
  • You can differentiate between the houses by the shape of their chimneys.你可以凭借烟囱形状的不同来区分这两幢房子。
  • He never learned to differentiate between good and evil.他从未学会分辨善恶。
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