劍橋雅思系列是同學們在備考中必備的教材之一，所以同學們在備考的時候是要準備一些這方面的資料。今天新航道雅思小編給大家帶了：劍橋雅思4Test2閱讀passage3原文+譯文：玩耍是件嚴肅的事。

  劍橋雅思4Test2閱讀passage3原文+譯文：玩耍是件嚴肅的事

  PLAY IS A SERIOUS BUSINESS

  Does play help develop bigger, better brains? Bryant Furlow investigates

  玩耍是件嚴肅的事

  玩耍能否幫助大腦發育得更大更好?Bryant Furlow就此展開了調査。

  A Playing is a serious business. Children engrossed in a make-believe world, fox cubs play-fighting or kittens teasing a ball of string aren’t just having fun. Play may look like a carefree and exuberant way to pass the time before the hard work of adulthood comes along, but there’s much more to it than that. For a start, play can even cost animals their lives. Eighty per cent of deaths among juvenile fur seals occur because playing pups fail to spot predators approaching. It is also extremely expensive in terms of energy. Playful young animals use around two or three per cent of their energy cavorting, and in children that figure can be closer to fifteen per cent. ‘Even two or three per cent is huge,’ says John Byers of Idaho University. ‘You just don’t find animals wasting energy like that,’ he adds. There must be a reason.

  A玩耍是件嚴肅的事。孩子們沉溺在假想的世界中，狐貍幼崽兒嬉戲打鬧，小貓玩線球，這些行為都不只是取樂而已。看上去玩耍是成人世界的辛苦工作到來之前，無憂無慮、精力充沛的消磨時光的方式，其實遠非如此。首先，玩耍可能使動物們送命。比如，百分之八十的小海狗死亡都是因為玩耍中的小海狗沒能看到接近的捕食者。玩耍也是相當消耗精力的。頑皮的小動物要花上百分之二三的精力來嬉戲打鬧，而對于兒童而言，這個數字可以高達百分之十五。“就算只有百分之二三也是個不小的數目了。”Idaho大學的John Byers說道，“你很難發現動物們如此消耗精力。”Byers補充說。總有一定的原因使他們這么做。

  B But if play is not simply a developmental hiccup, as biologists once thought, why did it evolve? The latest idea suggests that play has evolved to build big brains. In other words, playing makes you intelligent. Playfulness, it seems, is common only among mammals, although a few of the larger-brained birds also indulge. Animals at play often use unique signs — tail-wagging in dogs, for example — to indicate that activity superficially resembling adult behaviour is not really in earnest. A popular explanation of play has been that it helps juveniles develop the skills they will need to hunt, mate and socialise as adults. Another has been that it allows young animals to get in shape for adult life by improving their respiratory endurance. Both these ideas have been questioned in recent years.

  B但是，如果玩耍不像生物學家們過去認為的那樣，只是發育過程中的小插曲的話，那么到底是什么促使了玩耍的發展呢?最新的觀點認為玩耍可以促進大腦的發育。換句話說，玩耍使你變得聰明。盡管一些腦子比較大的鳥類也沉溺其中，但玩耍好像還是只在哺乳動物中普遍存在。玩耍中的動物會用一些獨特的標志——比如狗搖尾巴來表明這種簡單模仿大動物行為的舉動并不是玩真的。一種有關玩耍的普遍觀點說，玩耍能幫助小動物發展成年之后捕獵、交配以及社交所需要的技能。另一個理論認為，通過增強小動物的呼吸耐力，玩耍可以幫助他們在體力上更適應成年生活。但是這兩個理論近年來都遭到了置疑。

  C Take the exercise theory. If play evolved to build muscle or as a kind of endurance training, then you would expect to see permanent benefits. But Byers points out that the benefits of increased exercise disappear rapidly after training stops, so any improvement in endurance resulting from juvenile play would be lost by adulthood. ‘If the function of play was to get into shape,’ says Byers, ‘the optimum time for playing would depend on when it was most advantageous for the young of a particular species to do so. But it doesn’t work like that.’ Across species, play tends to peak about halfway through the suckling stage and then decline.

  C就拿鍛煉理論來說吧。如果玩耍是為了增強肌肉，或是進行某種耐力訓練，那么我們應該能夠看到一些終生的效果。但是Byers指出，訓練一結束，由增強訓練所帶來的好處就隨之迅速消失了，所以，任何通過小時候的玩耍增強的耐力到了成年階段就會消失殆盡了。“如果玩耍的作用就是使身體健康的話，”Byers說道，“那么玩耍的最佳時間就應該是對于某種小動物(身體發展)最有利的時間，但是，實際情況并非如此。”無論什么種群的動物，玩耍都傾向于在哺乳期的中期達到頂峰，然后則開始走下坡路。

  D Then there’s the skills-training hypothesis. At first glance, playing animals do appear to be practising the complex manoeuvres they will need in adulthood. But a closer inspection reveals this interpretation as too simplistic. In one study, behavioural ecologist Tim Caro, from the University of California, looked at the predatory play of kittens and their predatory behaviour when they reached adulthood. He found that the way the cats played had no significant effect on their hunting prowess in later life.

  D接著，我們又有了技能訓練假說。乍看上去，玩耍的小動物好像是在練習那些成年時必須的復雜動作。但是，更為仔細的觀察表明，這種解釋把問題簡單化了。在某項研究中，California大學的行為生態學家Tim Caro觀察了小貓的捕食游戲以及它們成年之后的捕獵行為。他發現，小貓玩耍的方式對成年后的捕獵技能并沒有太大的影響。

  E Earlier this year, Sergio Pellis of Lethbridge University, Canada, reported that there is a strong positive link between brain size and playfulness among mammals in general. Comparing measurements for fifteen orders of mammal, he and his team found larger brains (for a given body size) are linked to greater playfulness. The converse was also found to be true. Robert Barton of Durham University believes that, because large brains are more sensitive to developmental stimuli than smaller brains, they require more play to help mould them for adulthood. ‘I concluded it’s to do with learning, and with the importance of environmental data to the brain during development,’ he says.

  E今年早些時候，加拿大Lethbridge大學的Sergio Pellis公布說，哺乳動物的玩耍與他們大腦的大小往往成正比。在比較了十五種哺乳動物的測量數據之后，Sergio和他的研究小組發現，更多的玩耍會造就大一些的腦子(與身體大小比較而言)，而且這個理論反過來也成立。Durham大學的Robert Barton認為，由于大一座的腦子比小一些的腦子對發育刺激更敏感，因此它們需要更多的玩耍來促進它們發育至成年期。他說：“我的結論是，玩耍與學習有關，也與大腦發育過程中環境資料的重要性有關。”

  F According to Byers, the timing of the playful stage in young animals provides an important clue to what’s going on. If you plot the amount of time a juvenile devotes to play each day over the course of its development, you discover a pattern typically associated with a ‘sensitive period’ — a brief development window during which the brain can actually be modified in ways that are not possible earlier or later in life. Think of the relative ease with which young children — but not infants or adults — absorb language. Other researchers have found that play in cats, rats and mice is at its most intense just as this ‘window of opportunity’ reaches its peak.

  F根據Byers的理論，對于小動物而言，玩耍期的時機對未來的發展至關重要。如果你用圖表來表明在發育期間，小動物每天用于玩耍的時間的話，就會發現一種一般與“敏感期”相關聯的模式。所謂“敏感期”指的是發育過程中一個短暫的階段，在這一階段中，大腦會獲得此前和此后都不可能獲得的改變。想想孩子們在學習語言時那種嬰兒們和大人們都無法做到的得心應手吧。其他學者也發現，貓、田鼠和家鼠最愛玩耍的時期恰好是這扇“機會之窗”達到峰值的時候。

  G ‘People have not paid enough attention to the amount of the brain activated by play,’ says Marc Bekoff from Colorado University. Bekoff studied coyote pups at play and found that the kind of behaviour involved was markedly more variable and unpredictable than that of adults. Such behaviour activates many different parts of the brain, he reasons. Bekoff likens it to a behavioural kaleidoscope, with animals at play jumping rapidly between activities. ‘They use behaviour from a lot of different contexts — predation, aggression, reproduction,’ he says. ‘Their developing brain is getting all sorts of stimulation.’

  G“人們沒有充分注意到玩耍激活了大腦多少部件。”Colorado大學的Marc Bekoff說。Becoff研究了玩要的小土狼，發現其中所涉及的行為顯然比成年土狼的花樣更多，更不可預測。他推斷，這樣的行為能激活大腦許多不同的部分。由于動物們在玩耍時行為總是迅速地變換，Becoff將玩耍比喻為一個行為萬花筒。“他們會做出不同環境所需要的動作——捕獵，進攻，繁殖等，而他們正在發育的大腦獲得了各種各樣的刺激。”

  H Not only is more of the brain involved in play than was suspected, but it also seems to activate higher cognitive processes. ‘There’s enormous cognitive involvement in play,’ says Bekoff. He points out that play often involves complex assessments of playmates, ideas of reciprocity and the use of specialised signals and rules. He believes that play creates a brain that has greater behavioural flexibility and improved potential for learning later in life. The idea is backed up by the work of Stephen Siviy of Gettysburg College. Siviy studied how bouts of play affected the brain’s levels of a particular chemical associated with the stimulation and growth of nerve cells. He was surprised by the extent of the activation. ‘Play just lights everything up,’ he says. By allowing link-ups between brain areas that might not normally communicate with each other, play may enhance creativity.

  H大腦不僅比猜想中更多地參與玩耍，而且好像還能夠激活更髙級的認知過程。“玩耍中有很多的認知成分。”Becoff指出。玩耍通常包括對玩伴的評估，互相依存的觀念，以及恃殊標志及規則的使用。他認為玩耍會創造一個更具行為靈活性，在今后生活中更多學習潛力的大腦。這一觀點得到了Gettysburg學院Stephen Siviy研究結果的支持。Siviy認為玩耍能夠影響大腦中一種特殊化學物質的分泌，這種物質會刺激神經細胞生長。他被這種刺激可能達到的程度嚇了一跳。“玩耍使一切都變得活潑起來。”通過使大腦中不常交流的部分產生聯系，玩耍也許會提髙創造力。

  I What might further experimentation suggest about the way children are raised in many societies today? We already know that rat pups denied the chance to play grow smaller brain components and fail to develop the ability to apply social rules when they interact with their peers. With schooling beginning earlier and becoming increasingly exam-orientated, play is likely to get even less of a look-in. Who knows what the result of that will be?

  I進一步的實驗又會對如今許多社會中，孩子們被養育的方式有何影響呢?我們已經知道，沒有機會玩耍的小老鼠，大腦各部分發育得比較小，同時也不具備運用社會規則與其他小老鼠交流的能力。在上學年齡越來越早，學校教育越來越應試化的今天，大家對玩耍的作用不屑一顧。誰會知道這樣做會帶來什么樣的影響呢?

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