剑桥雅思系列真题是剑桥大学考试委员会外语考试部出版各类考试真题的唯一官方出版社出版的权威教材，书中包含最新的雅思全真试题资料，是各类雅思考生备考过程中必不可少的参考书。非常适合学生自学的习题解答和听力录音文本。
Passage 1
参考译文
Lost for words
Many minority languages are on the danger list
语言的消失
——许多少数民族语言濒临灭绝
In the Native American Navajo nation, which sprawls across four states in the American south-west, the native language is dying. Most of its speakers are middle-aged or elderly. Although many students take classes in Navajo, the schools are run in English. Street signs, supermarket goods and even their own newspaper are all in English. Not surprisingly, linguists doubt that any native speakers of Navajo will remain in a hundred years’ time.
对于居住在美国西南部四州的那瓦霍人来讲，他们的语言正在遭遇灭顶之灾。大多数说那瓦霍语的人要么是中年人，要么就是垂垂老者。尽管有许多学生都在学习该门语言，可是学校却是用英文授课的。路牌、超市商品说明、甚至报纸全部是英文的。因此语言学家怀疑在百年之后还会不会有人会说这门语言也就不足为奇了。
Navajo is far from alone. Half the world’s 6,800 languages are likely to vanish within two generations — that’s one language lost every ten days. Never before has the planet’s linguistic diversity shrunk at such a pace. ‘At the moment, we are heading for about three or four languages dominating the world,’ says Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading. ‘It’s a mass extinction, and whether we will ever rebound from the loss is difficult to know.’
那瓦霍语决不是惟一会有此厄运的语言。再经历两代人的时间，全球6,800种语言当中的半数就有可能从世界上彻底消失——这就相当于平均每十天就有一种语言消失。地球上语言的多样性从未以如此惊人的速度降低过。“现在，我们面临的将是两三种语言支配整个世界。”雷丁大学的进化生物学家Marl Pagel说，“这就是(语言的)大规模灭绝，而且我们很难知道能否从这种语言灭绝当中恢复过来。”
Isolation breeds linguistic diversity: as a result, the world is peppered with languages spoken by only a few people. Only 250 languages have more than a million speakers, and at least 3,000 have fewer than 2,500. It is not necessarily these small languages that are about to disappear. Navajo is considered endangered despite having 150,000 speakers. What makes a language endangered is not just the number of speakers, but how old they are. If it is spoken by children it is relatively safe. The critically endangered languages are those that are only spoken by the elderly, according to Michael Krauss, director of the Alassk Native Language Center, in Fairbanks.
封闭产生了语言的多样性。结果整个世界就布满了只有几个人说的语言。只有250种语言拥有超过100万的使用者，而至少有3,000种语言使用者不足2,500人。那些行将消失的小语种并非命该如此。尽管仍有15万人在使用那瓦霍语，但这种语言还是上了濒危名单。判断一种语言是否濒危的标准不是使用者的数量，而是使用者的年龄。如果一种语言是孩子们在使用，就会相对安全些。用费尔班克斯Alassk语言中心的主任Micheal Krauss的话说就是，真正面临灭绝之灾的是那些只有老年人才懂得说的语言。
Why do people reject the language of their parents? It begins with a crisis of confidence, when a small community finds itself alongside a larger, wealthier society, says Nicholas Ostler, of Britain’s Foundation for Endangered Languages, in Bath. ‘People lose faith in their culture,’ he says. ‘When the next generation reaches their teens, they might not want to be induced into the old traditions.’
可人们为什么拒绝说他们父母的语言呢?这一切都始于一场信任危机。BATH英国濒危语言基金会成员Nicholas Ostler说：“当一个小规模社会发现自己与一个大规模，更富有的社会并肩而存的时候，其成员就会对自己的文化丧失信心。当这个社会的下一代进人青春期的时候，他们很可能不会接受(包括语言在内的)传统事物。”
The change is not always voluntary. Quite often, governments try to kill off a minority language by banning its use in public or discouraging its use in schools, all to promote national unity. The former US policy of running Indian reservation schools in English, for example, effectively put languages such as Navajo on the danger list. But Salikoko Mufwene, who chairs the Linguistics department at the University of Chicago, argues that the deadliest weapon is not government policy but economic globalisation. ‘Native Americans have not lost pride in their language, but they have had to adapt to socio-economic pressures,’ he says. ‘They cannot refuse to speak English if most commercial activity is in English.’ But are languages worth saving? At the very least, there is a loss of data for the study of languages and their evolution, which relies on comparisons between languages, both living and dead. When an unwritten and unrecorded language disappears, it is lost to science.
这种转变往往不是自发的。为了加强国家凝聚力，政府通常会通过在公共场合禁用，以及在学校中不提倡使用的方法，消灭少数民族语言。例如，以前美国政府在印地安保留地学校推行英语授课政策，这事实上就是将那瓦霍语等少数语言推上了濒危名单。但是芝加哥大学语言学系系主任Salikoko Mufwene认为，最致命的原因并不是政府政策，而是经济的全球化。他说，“美国印地安人并没有失去对他们自己语言的信心，但是他们不得不去适应社会经济压力。如果大多数生意都是用英语来谈的，他们就不能拒绝说英语，但是，濒危语言就真的值得去挽救吗?至少，对于语言及其进化研究来讲，(不去挽救)就会导致资料的缺失，因为该研究正是基于对现存的和过去的语言的比较而进行的。当一门既无文字记录也无录音考证的语言消失时，对于科学(研究)来讲，它也就不存在了。
Language is also intimately bound up with culture, so it may be difficult to preserve one without the other. ‘If a person shifts from Navajo to English, they lose something,’ Mufwene says. ‘Moreover, the loss of diversity may also deprive us of different ways of looking at the world,’ says Pagel. There is mounting evidence that learning a language produces physiological changes in the brain. ‘Your brain and mine are different from the brain of someone who speaks French, for instance,’ Pagel says, and this could affect our thoughts and perceptions. ‘The patterns and connections we make among various concepts may be structured by the linguistic habits of our community.’
语言与文化也有千丝万缕的联系，因此要想单纯保存语言而不保留文化是非常困难的。“如果一个本来说那瓦霍语的人现在要改说英语，那么他准得失去点东西。”Mufwene说道，Pagel也评价道，“而且，语言多样性的丧失也使我们无法以多种方式来看待这个世界。”越来越多的证据表明，学习一门语言可以为大脑带来生理上的变化。“比如说，你我的大脑与说法语人的大脑就十分不同，”Page说，这是会影响我们的思维和看法的。“我们针对不同的概念建立了不同的模式和联系，这很可能就是由我们社会的语言习惯构筑而成的。”
So despite linguists’ best efforts, many languages will disappear over the next century. But a growing interest in cultural identity may prevent the direst predictions from coming true. ‘The key to fostering diversity is for people to learn their ancestral tongue, as well as the dominant language,’ says Doug Whalen, founder and president of the Endangered Language Fund in New Haven, Connecticut. ‘Most of these languages will not survive without a large degree of bilingualism,’ he says. In New Zealand, classes for children have slowed the erosion of Maori and rekindled interest in the language. A similar approach in Hawaii has produced about 8,000 new speakers of Polynesian languages in the past few years. In California, ‘apprentice’ programmes have provided life support to several indigenous languages. Volunteer ‘apprentices’ pair up with one of the last living speakers of a Native American tongue to learn a traditional skill such as basket weaving, with instruction exclusively in the endangered language. After about 300 hours of training they are generally sufficiently fluent to transmit the language to the next generation. But Mufwene says that preventing a language dying out is not the same as giving it new life by using it every day. ‘Preserving a language is more like preserving fruits in a jar,’ he says.
所以，尽管语言学家已经竭尽全力，但是许多语言到了下个世纪还是会消失。但是，一种对文化认同感越来越多的关注，也许会阻止最骇人的预言成为现实。“保持语言多样性的关键在于，让人们接受主流语言的同时，也去学习他们祖先的语言。”康那狄格州纽黑文市濒危语言基金会主席Doug Whalen说道，“如果不实行双语制度，大多数濒危语言都无法生存下去。”在新西兰，为孩子们开设的课程明显减轻了毛利语所受的损害，并且重新燃起了人们对该语言的兴趣。在夏威夷，一种相似的方式使波利尼西亚语的使用者在过去数年中增长了8,000人。在加利福尼亚州，“学徒”计划使得数种土著语言得以生存。“学徒”志愿者与某种印地安语的最后一些使用者中的一位组成小组，学习如编织篮子这样的传统工艺，当然交流全部都是用印地安语。通常，经过300个小时的训练后，他们就可以流利地说了，其流利程度足以将这种语言传给他们的子女。但是Mufwene指出，避免语言消失并不等同于通过每天的使用赋予其新的生命。他指出，“保存语言更像用罐子保存水果。”
However, preservation can bring a language back from the dead. There are examples of languages that have survived in written form and then been revived by later generations. But a written form is essential for this, so the mere possibility of revival has led many speakers of endangered languages to develop systems of writing where none existed before.
然而，通过保存的确可以使一门语言起死回生。已经有例子表明，有些语言通过文字记录被保存了下来，而且还在后代中得以复兴。当然，文字记录是这其中的关键。因此，单单是这种语言复兴的可能性，就使得很多说濒危语言的人试图去创造本来并不存在的文字系统。
Passage 2
参考译文
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE IN AUSTRALIA
澳大利亚的另类疗法
The first students to study alternative medicine at university level in Australia began their four-year, full-time course at the University of Technology, Sydney, in early 1994. Their course covered, among other therapies, acupuncture. The theory they learnt is based on the traditional Chinese explanation of this ancient healing art: that it can regulate the flow of ‘Qi’ or energy through pathways in the body. This course reflects how far some alternative therapies have come in their struggle for acceptance by the medical establishment.
1994年初，澳大利亚第一批另类疗法学生在悉尼科技大学开始了他们为期四年的全职课程。除了学习其他一些疗法之外，他们的课程还包括针灸术，他们所学的理论基于中国古代对这门古老疗法的解释：那就是针灸可以调节“气”或能量在人体神经系统中的流通。这门课程足以反映另类疗法在争取医疗机构认同的斗争中所取得的成果。
Australia has been unusual in the Western world in having a very conservative attitude to natural or alternative therapies, according to Dr Paul Laver, a lecturer in Public Health at the University of Sydney. ‘We’ve had a tradition of doctors being fairly powerful and I guess they are pretty loath to allow any pretenders to their position to come into it.’ In many other industrialised countries, orthodox and alternative medicine have worked ‘hand in glove’ for years. In Europe, only orthodox doctors can prescribe herbal medicine. In Germany, plant remedies account for 10% of the national turnover of pharmaceuticals. Americans made more visits to alternative therapists than to orthodox doctors in 1990, and each year they spend about $US 12 billion on therapies that have not been scientifically tested.
由于对自然或另类疗法所采取的极端保守态度，澳大利亚在西方国家中独树一帜。悉尼大学公共健康系博士Paul Laver评价道：“我们有个传统，医生是相当权威的，我猜他们很不愿意让那些觊觎他们位置的冒牌货得逞。”在其他许多工业国家里，正统医生和另类医师早已亲密无间地合作多年了。在欧洲，只有正统医生才可以开草药。在德国，草药占了药品销售额的10%。1990年美国人去看另类疗法医师的次数比去看传统医生的次数还多，而每年，他们花在未经科学测试的疗法上的钱竟髙达约120亿美元。
Disenchantment with orthodox medicine has seen the popularity of alternative therapies in Australia climb steadily during the past 20 years. In a 1983 national health survey, 1.9% of people said they had contacted a chiropractor, naturopath, osteopath, acupuncturist or herbalist in the two weeks prior to the survey. By 1990, this figure had risen to 2.6% of the population. The 550,000 consultations with alternative therapists reported in the 1990 survey represented about an eighth of the total number of consultations with medically qualified personnel covered by the survey, according to Dr Laver and colleagues writing in the Australian Journal of Public Health in 1993. ‘A better educated and less accepting public has become disillusioned with the experts in general, and increasingly sceptical about science and empirically based knowledge,’ they said. ‘The high standing of professionals, including doctors, has been eroded as a consequence.’
在过去20年中，由于人们对传统医疗不再迷信，另类疗法在澳大利亚慢慢流行起来。在1983年进行的全国健康调査中，有1.9%的人说此前两周内曾经去看过按摩师、理疗家、整骨医师、针灸医生或草药医生。到了1990年，这个数字已经攀升到澳大利亚人口的2.6%。根据Laver博士和他的同事们刊登在1993年《澳大利亚公共健康期刊》上的报道：在1990年调査中，另类疗法医生进行了55万次诊断，这个数字几乎占了调查中所有医疗诊断的八分之一。“总体而言，受过良好教育又不那么轻信的民众已经对专家失望了，而且对科学和经验主义知识已经越来越怀疑了，”博士们说，“结果，包括医生在内的专业人士的崇高地位也就大打折扣。”
Rather than resisting or criticising this trend, increasing numbers of Australian doctors, particularly younger ones, are forming group practices with alternative therapists or taking courses themselves, particularly in acupuncture and herbalism. Part of the incentive was financial, Dr Laver said. ‘The bottom line is that most general practitioners are business people. If they see potential clientele going elsewhere, they might want to be able to offer a similar service.’
越来越多的澳大利亚医生，特别是那些年轻一些的医师，非但没有抵制或是批判这样一个潮流，反而开始与另类疗法医师联合开业，或是干脆自己去学习相关课程，尤其是针灸和草药医学。Laver博士说，部分动机当然是出于经济考虑。“关键在于大多数全科医生都是商人。如果他们看到潜在的客户去别处看病，他们就想也要能提供类似的服务。”
In 1993, Dr Laver and his colleagues published a survey of 289 Sydney people who attended eight alternative therapists’ practices in Sydney. These practices offered a wide range of alternative therapies from 25 therapists. Those surveyed had experienced chronic illnesses, for which orthodox medicine had been able to provide little relief. They commented that they liked the holistic approach of their alternative therapists and the friendly, concerned and detailed attention they had received. The cold, impersonal manner of orthodox doctors featured in the survey. An increasing exodus from their clinics, coupled with this and a number of other relevant surveys carried out in Australia, all pointing to orthodox doctors’ inadequacies, have led mainstream doctors themselves to begin to admit they could learn from the personal style of alternative therapists. Dr. Patrick Store, President of the Royal College of General Practitioners, concurs that orthodox doctors could learn a lot about bedside manner and advising patients on preventative health from alternative therapists.
1993年，Laver博士和他的同事们发表了一项调查报告，报告包括289名曾到8家另类疗法诊所寻求治疗的悉尼市民。这些诊所共有25名另类治疗师，提供相当广泛的另类疗法。接受调查的人都患有慢性疾病，正统疗法治疗对这些疾病的效果微乎其微。病人们评价说他们喜欢另类疗法医师所采取的全面的治疗手段，也喜欢那里友善热情、细致入微的关怀。这次调査揭示了正统医生的冷漠态度。病人从诊所中大批离去，加上其他一些相关的全国性调查的结果，矛头直指正统医生的不足之处，这就使得他们开始承认应该学习一下另类疗法医师的亲切态度。就连皇家医学院的Patrik Stone博士也赞同说，正统医生应该多学习另类疗法医师对待病人的态度，还有他们给病人的预防建议。
According to the Australian Journal of Public Health, 18% of patients visiting alternative therapists do so because they suffer from musculo-skeletal complaints; 12% suffer from digestive problems, which is only 1% more than those suffering from emotional problems. Those suffering from respiratory complaints represent 7% of their patients, and candida sufferers represent an equal percentage. Headache sufferers and those complaining of general ill health represent 6% and 5% of patients respectively, and a further 4% see therapists for general health maintenance.
根据《澳大利亚公共健康期刊》，18%的病人因为得了肌肉骨骼方面的疾病而去看另类医师;12%的人则是因为消化系统疾病，这个数字只比因为感情问题而去就医的人多1个百分点。呼吸系统疾病患者和假丝酵母过敏者各占7%。头疼就医者和整体感觉身体不适而就医者分别占到了6%和5%，还有4%的人看医生只是为了保持身体健康。
The survey suggested that complementary medicine is probably a better term than alternative medicine. Alternative medicine appears to be an adjunct, sought in times of disenchantment when conventional medicine seems not to offer the answer.
这项调查表明，与另类疗法这个字眼相比，互补疗法是个更为合适的称呼。前者听起来仿佛是正统疗法的附庸，一种只有当你对传统疗法的无能为力失望后，才会去追寻的东西。
Passage 3
参考译文
PLAY IS A SERIOUS BUSINESS
Does play help develop bigger, better brains? Bryant Furlow investigates
玩耍是件严肃的事
玩耍能否帮助大脑发育得更大更好?Bryant Furlow就此展开了调査。
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玩耍是件严肃的事。孩子们沉溺在假想的世界中，狐狸幼崽儿嬉戏打闹，小猫玩线球，这些行为都不只是取乐而已。看上去玩耍是成人世界的辛苦工作到来之前，无忧无虑、精力充沛的消磨时光的方式，其实远非如此。首先，玩耍可能使动物们送命。比如，百分之八十的小海狗死亡都是因为玩耍中的小海狗没能看到接近的捕食者。玩耍也是相当消耗精力的。顽皮的小动物要花上百分之二三的精力来嬉戏打闹，而对于儿童而言，这个数字可以高达百分之十五。“就算只有百分之二三也是个不小的数目了。”Idaho大学的John Byers说道，“你很难发现动物们如此消耗精力。”Byers补充说。总有一定的原因使他们这么做。
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，如果玩耍不像生物学家们过去认为的那样，只是发育过程中的小插曲的话，那么到底是什么促使了玩耍的发展呢?最新的观点认为玩耍可以促进大脑的发育。换句话说，玩耍使你变得聪明。尽管一些脑子比较大的鸟类也沉溺其中，但玩耍好像还是只在哺乳动物中普遍存在。玩耍中的动物会用一些独特的标志——比如狗摇尾巴来表明这种简单模仿大动物行为的举动并不是玩真的。一种有关玩耍的普遍观点说，玩耍能帮助小动物发展成年之后捕猎、交配以及社交所需要的技能。另一个理论认为，通过增强小动物的呼吸耐力，玩耍可以帮助他们在体力上更适应成年生活。但是这两个理论近年来都遭到了置疑。
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就拿锻炼理论来说吧。如果玩耍是为了增强肌肉，或是进行某种耐力训练，那么我们应该能够看到一些终生的效果。但是Byers指出，训练一结束，由增强训练所带来的好处就随之迅速消失了，所以，任何通过小时候的玩耍增强的耐力到了成年阶段就会消失殆尽了。“如果玩耍的作用就是使身体健康的话，”Byers说道，“那么玩耍的最佳时间就应该是对于某种小动物(身体发展)最有利的时间，但是，实际情况并非如此。”无论什么种群的动物，玩耍都倾向于在哺乳期的中期达到顶峰，然后则开始走下坡路。
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接着，我们又有了技能训练假说。乍看上去，玩耍的小动物好像是在练习那些成年时必须的复杂动作。但是，更为仔细的观察表明，这种解释把问题简单化了。在某项研究中，California大学的行为生态学家Tim Caro观察了小猫的捕食游戏以及它们成年之后的捕猎行为。他发现，小猫玩耍的方式对成年后的捕猎技能并没有太大的影响。
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今年早些时候，加拿大Lethbridge大学的Sergio Pellis公布说，哺乳动物的玩耍与他们大脑的大小往往成正比。在比较了十五种哺乳动物的测量数据之后，Sergio和他的研究小组发现，更多的玩耍会造就大一些的脑子(与身体大小比较而言)，而且这个理论反过来也成立。Durham大学的Robert Barton认为，由于大一座的脑子比小一些的脑子对发育刺激更敏感，因此它们需要更多的玩耍来促进它们发育至成年期。他说：“我的结论是，玩耍与学习有关，也与大脑发育过程中环境资料的重要性有关。”
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根据Byers的理论，对于小动物而言，玩耍期的时机对未来的发展至关重要。如果你用图表来表明在发育期间，小动物每天用于玩耍的时间的话，就会发现一种一般与“敏感期”相关联的模式。所谓“敏感期”指的是发育过程中一个短暂的阶段，在这一阶段中，大脑会获得此前和此后都不可能获得的改变。想想孩子们在学习语言时那种婴儿们和大人们都无法做到的得心应手吧。其他学者也发现，猫、田鼠和家鼠最爱玩耍的时期恰好是这扇“机会之窗”达到峰值的时候。
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“人们没有充分注意到玩耍激活了大脑多少部件。”Colorado大学的Marc Bekoff说。Becoff研究了玩要的小土狼，发现其中所涉及的行为显然比成年土狼的花样更多，更不可预测。他推断，这样的行为能激活大脑许多不同的部分。由于动物们在玩耍时行为总是迅速地变换，Becoff将玩耍比喻为一个行为万花筒。“他们会做出不同环境所需要的动作——捕猎，进攻，繁殖等，而他们正在发育的大脑获得了各种各样的刺激。”
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大脑不仅比猜想中更多地参与玩耍，而且好像还能够激活更髙级的认知过程。“玩耍中有很多的认知成分。”Becoff指出。玩耍通常包括对玩伴的评估，互相依存的观念，以及恃殊标志及规则的使用。他认为玩耍会创造一个更具行为灵活性，在今后生活中更多学习潜力的大脑。这一观点得到了Gettysburg学院Stephen Siviy研究结果的支持。Siviy认为玩耍能够影响大脑中一种特殊化学物质的分泌，这种物质会刺激神经细胞生长。他被这种刺激可能达到的程度吓了一跳。“玩耍使一切都变得活泼起来。”通过使大脑中不常交流的部分产生联系，玩耍也许会提髙创造力。
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进一步的实验又会对如今许多社会中，孩子们被养育的方式有何影响呢?我们已经知道，没有机会玩耍的小老鼠，大脑各部分发育得比较小，同时也不具备运用社会规则与其他小老鼠交流的能力。在上学年龄越来越早，学校教育越来越应试化的今天，大家对玩耍的作用不屑一顾。谁会知道这样做会带来什么样的影响呢?