1 . Overhear any conversation or pay close attention to your own, and you will hear laughter. You will probably also notice that, more often than not, the laughter is in response to something that was not very funny—or was not funny at all. Take Hillary Clinton’s strategic laughter during heated exchanges with Donald Trump in the presidential debates.
In one research in my Vocal Communication Lab at UCLA, we played recorded laughs to listeners and asked them, “Is this laugh ‘real’ or ‘fake’?” Our recorded laughs were either taken from real conversations between friends in a laboratory setting, or produced by request, also in the lab. It turned out that about 70 per cent of the listeners were able to tell the “real” laughs from the “fake” ones. Quite a few fake laughs sound pretty good, but why are fake laughs not as convincing as we expect? We can detect part of a laugh that is hard to fake—and that part has to do with the control of our breath.
Laughs could essentially be broken up into two different vocalisation (发声) systems: speech and emotion. Although both kinds of laughs are vocalised as “ha-ha-ha,” the intermittent breaths a person takes in—between the sounds give away a fake laugh. Real laughs have a higher proportion of breathy parts in between. Think about every time you force a laugh. You have to actually say the “ha-ha-ha,” and probably never consider how you breathe while doing it.
A fake laugh is basically an imitation of a real laugh. If you slow down a real laugh about two and a half times, it sounds like an ape (猿). But a slowed fake laugh sounds more like human speech. We put this observation to the test with the slowed-down versions of the laughs used for our first experiment, and asked participants whether the recordings were from a human or an animal. Though they couldn’t tell the origin of the real laugh, they were able to tell that the fake laugh came from a human.
Real laughs are produced by an emotional vocal system that humans share with all primates (灵长目动物), whereas fake laughs are produced by a speech system that is unique to humans. Laughter in humans likely evolved from play vocalisations in our primate ancestors. If one animal bites another during a rough-and-tumble (小打小闹的) play, it could be taken as an attack. But if they signal while panting (喘气) that they are just playing, the play can continue without being interrupted by an unnecessary real fight. In this way, real laughter reveals our animal nature.
1. Fake laughter is easy to detect because _________.| A．it is not in a real conversation |
| B．it responds to something that is not funny |
| C．its control of breath is different |
| D．it sounds too good to be true |
| A．human emotion | B．human speech |
| C．ape emotion | D．ape nature |
| A．Fake laugh is an imitation of real laugh. |
| B．Real laugh demonstrates our animal nature. |
| C．Humans and apes share an emotional vocal system. |
| D．A speech vocal system is unique to primates. |
2 . Help Migrant Workers
There is nothing like going home. More so if it is for the Spring Festival family reunion. For a migrant worker it perhaps means even more. To be able to set out on a homeward journey with money from a year’s toil in his pocket is the best thing he can think of.
About 200 million migrant workers nationwide are something left behind by economic reforms and opening up due to their contributions in the past three decades. It is almost impossible to imagine life in these places without them. However, they still form a disadvantaged group. Their rights are violated in different forms. Among other things, unpaid salaries are the most painful of such violations that are likely to drive a migrant worker to desperate actions.
It is good news that quite a number of local governments have organized special task forces to conduct inspections in those labor-intensive enterprises to make sure they have paid their migrant workers in a timely and fair manner. Construction commissions in almost all provinces have published hotlines for farmer-turned-construction workers to lodge complaints against their employers for withholding their salaries.
| A．Some have reportedly climbed up chimneys to jump to their death unless they get their defaulted salaries. |
| B．It is something every Chinese look forward to as the traditional gala draws near. |
| C．Unfortunately, weeks preceding the Spring Festival have turned out to be hard times for migrant workers. |
| D．Hopefully, these efforts will send more workers on a happy journey home for the Spring Festival with their salaries in their pockets. |
| E．However difficult the situations they are in, it is too cruel and unfair for employers to hold back salaries they should pay their migrant workers. |
| F．Objectively speaking, governments at various levels have done a great deal in helping these workers recover their defaulted salaries. |
