【摘要】这篇泛读文章是关于儿童成长话题，主要谈及了美国语言学家的一项最新研究——How babbling to babies can boost their brains父母与宝宝更多的沟通会更好的促进他们的大脑发育。这项研究对我们未来的社会生活有重大指导意义。现在，来看一下具体内容。考研不足100天，专业课如何提升一个level ？了解更多猛戳

　　
　　
　　
　　Themore parents talk to their children, the faster those children’s vocabularies grow and the better their intelligence develops.Researchers fromthe University of Kansas published the results of a decade-long study in which they had looked at how, and how much, 42 families in Kansas City conversed at home.Theyfound a close correlation between the number of words a child’s parents had spoken to him by the time he was three and his academic success at the age of nine.Children born intorichfamilies had heard 30m more words than those from a poorer background.This observation has profound implications for policies about babies and their parents. It suggests that sending children to “pre-school” at the age of fourcomes too late to compensate for educational shortcomings at home.

　　研究表明，父母与宝宝交流的越多，他们的词汇量增长的就越快，智力发育得也就会越好。堪萨斯大学的研究者观察了堪萨斯城的42个家庭如何交流，交谈多少。结果发现在宝宝三岁时父母和他交流的词数与其九岁时学习成绩间存在紧密关联。一般来讲，出生在富裕家庭的孩子比家庭背景差点的孩子多听到三百万个单词。这项研究对父母对孩子的教育有深刻的意义，也表明在孩子四岁时送他们去“学前班”，对于不常家里教育孩子的父母来说还是太晚了。

　　FernaldfromStanford University has found that the disparity appears well before a child is three. Even at the tender age of 18 months, when most toddlers speak only a dozen words, those from disadvantaged families are several months behind other, more favoured children. Indeed, Dr Fernald thinks the differentiation starts at birth.Toddlers from better-off backgrounds can identify the correct object in 750 milliseconds—200 milliseconds faster than those from poorer families.It is easy to see how this might happen. Toddlers learn new words from their context, so the faster a child understands the words he already knows, the easier it is for him to attend to those he does not.

　　斯坦福大学的菲尔诺德认为：这个差异在三岁之前就已经显现出来了。在宝宝18个月大时，大多数宝宝只能说几个词，而来自相对贫困的家庭的孩子相比于来自优越家庭的孩子已然落后几个月了。菲尔诺德认为这种差异从出生就已经开始了。来自优越家庭的小孩能够在750毫秒内认出正确物体，这比来自穷人家的孩子快200秒。儿童从语言环境中学习新词，所以他们对已有词汇理解的就会更快，那么掌握他还不知道的词就越容易。

　　这篇文章来源于2015年9月的《经济学人》，从中我们可以了解到在婴幼儿时期“语言交流”所起到的关键作用。呼吁现代社会的父母要用一些时间与孩子沟通，而不是总让他们“安静”，或者把孩子放在电视机前。

　　对于2016考研的同学来说，泛读的学习是对真题的必要补充，只要每天坚持积累下去，那么个人的英语阅读和写作能力都会有一个意想不到的提升。

　　（实习编辑：孙慧敏）