考满分 toefl

1 .<-NARRATOR:->Listen to a part of lecture in a psychology class.

旁白：听一段心理学的课堂讲解。

1 .<-FEMALE PROFESSOR:->OK. If I ask about the earliest thing you can remember, I'll bet for most of you your earliest memory, would be from about age 3, right?

教授：好了，如果我问大家最早的记忆在什么时期，我猜你们多数人都会说在3 岁左右，对吗？

2 .Well, that's true for most adults… we can't remember anything that happened before the age of 3.

对多数成年人来讲确实如此，3 岁之前的事情我们基本都不记得。

3 .And this phenomenon is so widespread and well-documented it has a name.

这种现象是如此普遍，而且有证据证明它有一个名字。

4 .It's called childhood amnesia and was first documented in 1893.

叫做儿童健忘症，在1893 年首次被文献所记载。

1 .As I said, this phenomenon refers to adults not being able to remember childhood incidents.

正如我刚才所说，这种现象指的是成年人不能够记住童年的事情。

2 .It's not children trying to remember events from last month or last year.

而不是说儿童试图回忆上个月或者是过去几年的事情。

3 .Of course it follows that if you can't remember an incident as a child, you probably won't remember it as an adult.

当然了，如果说你们小时候也记不得，长大后就更不能记得了。

1 .OK, so, so why is this? What are the reasons for childhood amnesia?

那么，为什么会这样呢？儿童健忘症的原因是什么呢？

2 .Well, once a popular explanation was that childhood memories are repressed ... uh, the memories are disturbing so that as adults we keep them buried.

曾经一个流行的解释是童年的记忆受到抑制和干扰，以至于我们成年后想不起来。

3 .And so we can’t recall them… and this is based on… well—well it’s not based on–on–on the the kind of solid research and lab testing I want to talk about today, so—so let’s put that explanation aside and concentrate on just two. OK.

我们之所以不能够回忆起来这些事情，是基于……这不是基于……我今天想要讨论的可靠的研究和实验室试验，所以，我们先不讲这个，就集中说说以下两点好吧！

1 .It could be that as children we do form memories of things prior to age 3, but forget them as we grow older. That's one explanation.

可能我们在3 岁之前的阶段确实也形成了记忆，但是在我们长大的过程中就慢慢遗忘了，这是一种解释。

2 .Another possibility is that children younger than 3 lack, lack some cognitive capacity for memory.

另一种可能性就是3 岁以下的孩子缺乏记忆认知能力。

3 .And that idea that children are unable to form memories that's been the dominant belief in psychology for the past hundred years.

而在过去的100 年中，儿童不能形成记忆的想法，一直在心理学界获得广泛认可。

1 .And this idea is very much tied to two things. The theories of Jean Piaget and also to language development in children.

这种想法和两件事联系在一起，让.皮亚杰的理论以及儿童语言发展的理论。

2 .So, Piaget's theory of cognitive development.

说说让.皮亚杰的认知发展理论。

3 .Piaget suggested that because they don't have language, children younger than 18 to 24 months live in the here and now, that is they lack the means to symbolically represent objects and events that are not physically presented.

让.皮亚杰提出由于18‐24 个月以下的孩子不会说话，那么就缺乏来表示物体，以及那些无法用实体呈现的事件的记忆符号。

4 .Everybody get that?

大家都明白了吗？

5 .Piaget proposed that young children don't have a way to represent things that aren't right in front of them.

让.皮亚杰提出儿童没有办法呈现那些并没有展现在他们面前的事物。

6 .That's what language does, right?

这就是语言的功能了，对吗？

7 .Words represent things, ideas.

词汇可以形容事物、想法。

1 .Once language starts to develop, from about age 2, they do have a system for symbolical representation and can talk about things which aren't in their immediate environment, including the past.

一旦语言在儿童2 岁左右开始发育的时候，他们就有了能一套呈现符号系统，而且能立即说出不在场的东西，也包括过去的事物。

2 .Of course, he didn't claim that infants don't have any sort of memory.

当然他没有说婴儿没有任何记忆

3 .It's acknowledged that they can recognize some stimuli, like faces.

大家都知道婴儿可以认知一些刺激物体，如人的长相。

4 .And for many years, this model was very much in favor in psychology, even though memory tests were never performed on young children.

这种模式在心理学界一直都被广泛认可，尽管没有在孩子身上进行过任何试验。

1 .Well, finally in the 1980s, a study was done.

在20 世纪80 年代，研究终于结束了。

2 .And this study showed that very young children under the age of 2 do have the capacity for recall.

研究显示2 岁一下的孩童有回忆的能力。

3 .Now, if the children can't talk, how was recall tested?

既然孩子那时候还不能说话，那么试验是怎么进行的呢？

4 .Well, that's a good question, since the capacity for recall has always been linked with the ability to talk.

这是个好问题，因为回忆的能力总是与语言能力相关联。

1 .So the researchers set up an experiment using imitation-based tasks.

所以研究者就用模拟测试进行了实验。

2 .Adults used props, uh, toys or other objects to demonstrate an action that have 2 steps.

成人用适当的玩具或者其他的物体来进行演示，包括两个步骤。

3 .The children were asked to imitate the steps immediately.

要求孩子们立即来模仿这些步骤

4 .And then again after delays of one or more month.

然后过了一个多月

5 .And even after a delay, the children could, could recall or replicate the action, the objects used, the steps involved and the order of the steps.Even children as young as 9 month.

甚至是更久，孩子们就不能想起来并展示了，包括使用的物体、演示的步骤及顺序。甚至是9 个月大的孩子

1 .Now, tests showed that there was a faster rate of forgetting among the youngest children.

如今实验证明，现在在最小的孩子中有一种更快的遗忘方式。

2 .But most importantly, it showed that development of recall did not depend on language development.

但更重要的是，实验显示儿童不是根据语言发育来回忆的。

3 .And that was an important finding.

但是还有一项重大的发现

4 .I guess I should add that the findings don't say that there was no conncetion, no connection between the development of language and memory.

我想我该提及一下，不能说语言发育和记忆没有关联。

5 .There are some evidence that being able to talk about that event does lead to having a stronger memory of that event.

有证据显示，有能力去讲一个事件会加强记忆。

6 .But that doesn't seem to be the real issue here.

但是问题并不在这儿。

1 .So back to our question about the cause of childhood amnesia.

回到我们关于儿童健忘症的原因这个问题上来。

2 .Well, there is something called the rate of forgetting and the childhood amnesia may reflect the high rate of forgetting.

有一种叫遗忘率的东西。儿童健忘症可能反映了高的遗忘率。

3 .In other words, children under the age of 3 do form memories and do so without language.

换言之，三岁以下的孩子能够形成记忆，而且与语言没有关系。

4 .But they forget the memories at a fast rate, probably faster than adults do.

但是他们遗忘的速度很快，很可能比成人快。

5 .Researchers have set a standard, sort of unexpected rate of forgetting.

研究人员设立了一个标准，一种意料之外的遗忘率

6 .But that expected rate was set based on tests done on adults.

但是我们能想到的遗忘率是基于成人测试基础上形成的。

7 .So what is the rate of forgetting for children under the age of 3.

那么三岁以下的孩子的遗忘率是多少呢？

8 .We expect it to be high. But the tests to prove this really haven't been done yet.

我们认为会很高，但能够反驳这个观点的测试目前还没有进行过。