Once a baby cries, the parents will go to see what happened as soon as possible. According to a new study, a baby’s cry can make adults
react very quickly, even if they are not related(相關(guān)的).
Oxford University researchers used a game called Whack-a-mole for the study. The game needs people to hit one buttons(按鈕). The players must react as quickly as they can to hit the button that lights up at random(隨機的). It is a game that requires speed and accuracy(準(zhǔn)確度).
The study included 40 men and women volunteers aged 19 to 59. Some of them had sons or daughters but none had a baby at the time. They played whack-a-mole after listening to different sounds, including babies’ crying, the crying of adults in trouble and birds’ song that sounds like babies’ crying.
The volunteer’ scores were higher after listening to the sound of crying babies. Men and women had similar scores. The results showed that a crying baby gets special attention.
“Few sounds make people react quite like the cry of a baby,” said Morten Kringelbach of Oxford’s psychiatry department, who led the study.
He added that a baby’s cry can increase adults’ heart rate and blood pressure. This is understandable, because in the course of human evolution(進化), taking care of babies has always been an important job for adults. When a baby is hungry or feeling bored or unwell, it will cry. As a result, human brains and bodies develop a special reaction to a baby’s cry.
小題1:According to the passage, how many volunteers took part in the study?
小題2:In the passage, the underlined word react means__________.
小題3:The game “whack-a-mole” shows__________.
| A．a(chǎn) baby’s cry can get special attention from adults |
| B．men and women have different reaction speed and accuracy |
| C．a(chǎn)dults without babies react more quickly to a baby’s cry |
| D．women react to a baby’s cry more quickly than men |
小題4:According to the passage, a baby’s cry__________.
| A．can get the same attention from adults as the birds’ song |
| B．is the noisiest sound |
| C．can increase adults’ heart rate and blood pressure |
| D．is good for its health |
小題5:From the last paragraph, we learn that_________.
| A．taking care of the younger babies was the most important thing in the past |
| B．human brains and bodies have developed to take care of babies |
| C．baby cries are a good way make adults react quickly |
| D．baby cries have developed a lot during the course of human evolution |
