|
|
正所谓得暑期者的天下，暑期复习也是强化复习的关键时段，考生一定要认真把握，加强集中复习。对于考研英语阅读来说，大家也要借着暑期这个东风提高阅读能力，下面为大家整理考研英语阅读文章，希望大家能够多读多练多记，提高整体阅读水平。
Who's the Smart Sibling?
Ten weeks ago, Bo Cleveland and his wife embarked on a highly unscientific
experiment-they gave birth to their first child. For now, Cleveland is too
exhausted to even consider having another baby, but eventually, he will. In
fact, hes already planned an egalitarian strategy for raising the rest of his
family. Little Arthur won't get any extra attention just because he's the
firstborn, and, says his father, he probably won't be much smarter than his
future .siblings; either.It's the sort of thing many parents would say, but it's
a bit surprising coming from Cleveland,who studies birth order and IQ at
Pennsylvania State University. As he knows too well, a study published recently
in the journal Science suggests that firstborns do turn out sharper than their
brothers and sisters, no matter how parents try to compensate. Is Cleveland
wrong? Is Arthur destined to be the smart sibling just because he had the good
luck to be born first?
For decades, scientists have been squabbling over birth order like siblings
fighting over a toy. Some of them say being a first-, middle- or lastborn has
significant effects on intelligence. Others say that's nonsense, The spat goes
back at least as far as Alfred Adler, a Freud-era psychologist who argued that
firstborns had an edge. Other psychologists found his theory easy to
believe—middle and youngest kids already had a bad rap, thanks to everything
from primogeniture laws to the Prodigal Son. When they set out to confirm the
birth-order effects Adler had predicted, they found some evidence. Dozens of
studies over the next several decades showed small differences in IQ;
scholastic-aptitude tests and other measures of achievement So did "anecdata”
suggesting that firstborns were more likely to win Nobel Prizes or become (ahem)
prominent psychologists.
But even though the scientists were turning up birth-order patterns easily,
they couldn't pin down a cause. Perhaps, one theory went, the mother's body was
somehow attacking the later offspring in uterus. Maternal antibody levels do
increase with each successive pregnancy. But there's no evidence that this leads
to differences in intelligence, and the new study in Silence,based on records
from nearly a quarter of a million young Norwegian men, strikes down the
antibody hypothesis. It looks at kids who are the eldest by accident-those whose
older siblings die in infancy--as well as those who are true firstborns. Both
groups rack up the same high scores on IQ tests. Whatever is lowering the
latterborns' scores, it isn't prenatal biology, since being raised as the
firstborn, not actually being the firstborn, is what counts.
The obvious culprits on the nurture side are parents. But it's hard to
think that favoritism toward firstborns exists in modem society. Most of us no
longer view secondborn as second best, and few parents will admit to treating
their kids differently. In surveys, they generally say they give their children
equal attention. Kids concur, reporting that they feel they're treated
fairly.
Maybe, then, the problem with latterborns isn't nature or nurture-maybe
there simply isn't a problem. Not all the research shows a difference in
intelligence. A pivotal 2000 study by Joe Rodgers ,now a professor emeritus at
the University of Oklahoma, found no link between birth order and smarts. And an
earlier study of American families found that the youngest kids, not the oldest,
did best in school. From that work, say psychologist Judith Rich Harris, a
prominent critic of birth-order patterns, it's clear that “the impression that
the firstborn is more often the academic achiever is false."
Meanwhile, many of the studies showing a birth-order pattern in IQ have a
big, fat,methodological flaw. The Norwegian Science study is an example, says
Cleveland: "It's comparing Bill, the first child in one family; to Bob, the
second child in another family." That would be fine if all families were
identical, but of course they aren't. The study controls for variables such as
parental education and family size. But Rodgers, the Oklahoma professor,notes
that there are "hundreds" of other factors in play; and because it's so hard to
discount all of them, he's "not sure whether the patterns in the Science article
are real."
No one is more sensitive to that criticism than the Norwegian scientists.
In fact, they already have an answer ready in the form of a second paper. Soon
to be published in the journal Intelligence, it's, similar to the Science study
except for one big thing: instead of comparing Bill to Bob, it compares Bill to
younger brothers Barry and Barney. The same birth- order pattern shows up: the
firstborns, on average, score about two points higher than their secondborn
brothers, and hapless thirdborns do even worse. "The purpose of the two papers
was exactly the same," says Petter Kristensen of Norway's National Institute of
Occupational Health, who led both new studies. "But this second one is much more
comprehensive, and in a sense it's better than the Science paper." The data are
there--within families, birth order really does seem linked to brain power. Even
the critics have to soften their positions a little. The Intelligence study
"must be taken very" seriously" says Rodgers.
No one, not even Kristensen, thinks the debate is over For one thing,
there's still that argument about what's causing birth-order effects. It's
possible, says UC Berkeley researcher Frank Sulloway, that trying .to treat kids
in an evenhanded way in fact results in inequity. Well-meaning parents may end
up shortchanging middleborns because there's one thing they can't equalize: at
no point in the middle child's life does he get to be the only kid in the house.
Alternatively, says Sulloway; there's the theory he has his money on, the
"family-niche hypothesis Older kids, whether out of desire or necessity axe
often called on to be "assistant parents," he notes. Getting that early- taste
of responsibility may prime them for achievement later on. "If they think Oh,
I'm supposed to be more intelligent so I'd better do my homework,' it doesn't
matter if they actually are more-intelligent," says Sulloway,"It becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy." If the firstborns' homework involves reading Science
and Intelligence, there'll be no stopping them now.
|
|
发表于 2017-8-6 15:50:51