文章大意:这是一篇说明文。文章讲述了成年人在一生中在本质上相同的事物之间做出选择时会产生无意识的偏好,科学家就“婴儿在选择的过程中会基于自己的喜好吗”展开了研究。
Though researchers have long known that adults build unconscious (无意识的) preferences over a lifetime of making choices between things that are essentially the same, the new finding that even babies engage in this phenomenon demonstrates that this way of justifying choice is intuitive (凭直觉的) and somehow fundamental to the human experience.
“The act of making a choice changes how we feel about our options,” said Alex Silver, a Johns Hopkins researcher. “Even infants who are really just at the start of making choices for themselves have this preference.”
The findings are published today in the journal Psychological Science. People assume they choose things that they like. But research suggests that’s sometimes backwards: we like things because we choose them. And, we dislike things that we don’t choose. “Adults make these inferences unconsciously,” said co-author Lisa Feigenson, a Johns Hopkins scientist in child development. “We justify our choice after the fact.”
This makes sense for adults in a consumer culture who must make random choices every day, between everything from toothpaste brands to styles of jeans. The question was when exactly people start doing this. So they turned to babies, who don’t get many choices so, as Feigenson puts it, are “a perfect window into the origin of this tendency.”
The team brought 10-to 20-month-old babies into the lab and gave them a choice of objects to play with; two equally bright and colorful soft blocks. They set them far apart, so the babies had to crawl to one or the other — a random choice. After the baby chose one of the toys, the researchers took it away and came back with a new option. The babies could then pick from the toy they didn’t play with the first time, or a brand new toy. Their choices showed they “dis-prefer the unchosen object.”
To continue studying the evolution of choice in babies, the lab will next look at the idea of “choice overload.” For adults, choice is good, but too many choices can be a problem, so the lab will try to determine if that is also true for babies.
85. What is people’s assumption about the act of making choices?
A.They like what they choose. |
B.They choose what they like. |
C.They base choices on the fact. |
D.They make choices thoughtfully. |
86. Why were babies selected as subjects for the study?
A.To help them make better choices. |
B.To guide them to perceive the world. |
C.To track the root of making random choices. |
D.To deepen the understanding of a consumer culture. |
87. What does the study on the babies show?
A.They like novel objects. |
B.Their choices are mostly based on colors. |
C.Their random choices become preferences. |
D.They are unable to make choices for themselves. |
88. What will the following study focus on?
A.The law of “choice overload”. |
B.The problem of adults’ many choices. |
C.Why too many choices can influence adults. |
D.Whether babies are troubled with many choices. |