Traditional Toys May Beat Gadgets in Language Development
電子玩具 讓父母、嬰兒「噤聲」
By Pam Belluck

Baby laptops, baby cellphones, talking farms – these are the whirring, whiz-bang toys of the moment, many of them marketed as tools to encourage babies’ language skills.
嬰兒筆電，嬰兒手機，交談農場，這些都是當前推出快速又先進的玩具，許多被當成激發嬰兒語言技能的工具行銷。

But a new study raises questions about whether such electronic playthings make it less likely that babies will engage in the verbal give-and-take with their parents that is so crucial to cognitive development.
不過，新研究報告質疑這類電子玩具是否會使嬰兒跟父母的口頭交流減少，這種交流對認知發展極其重要。

The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, found that when babies and parents played with electronic toys that are specifically advertised as language-promoters, parents spoke less and responded less to baby babbling than when they played with traditional toys like blocks or read board books. Babies also vocalized less when playing with electronic toys.
發表於「美國醫學會小兒科學期刊」的該研究報告發現，嬰兒與父母玩廣告中特別宣傳能促進語言發展的電子玩具時，父母說話及對嬰兒發聲的回應，要比玩傳統玩具如積木或閱讀硬頁書時來得少。嬰兒玩電子玩具時發聲也較少。

“My hunch is that they were letting the baby interact with the toy and they were on the sidelines,” said Anna V. Sosa, an associate professor of communications science and disorders at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, who led the study.
帶領研究的弗拉格斯塔夫北亞利桑納大學傳播科學與溝通障礙副教授安娜．索沙說：「我的直覺是，他們讓嬰兒跟玩具互動，自己退居一邊。」

The study builds on a growing body of research suggesting that electronic toys and e-books can make parents less likely to have the most meaningful kinds of verbal exchanges with their children.
這項研究建立在日漸增多的一些研究結果之上，既有結果顯示電子玩具和電子書可能使父母較少與小孩進行最有意義類型的口語交流。

“When you put the gadgets and gizmos in, the parents stop talking,” said Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University who was not involved in the new study, but who has found similar effects with e-books and electronic shape-sorters. “What you get is more behavioral regulation stuff, like ‘don’t touch that’ or ‘do this,’ or nothing because the books and toys take it over for you.”
天普大學心理學教授凱西．赫許帕塞克說：「當使用這類工具與裝置時，父母們就會閉口。你做的是更多行為規範，像是『別碰那』或『做這個』，甚至啥也不做，因為電子書與玩具已代勞了。」赫許帕塞克未參加上述研究，但此前對電子書跟電子形狀分類盒的研究有類似發現。

She added, “A toy should be 10 percent toy and 90 percent child, and with a lot of these electronic toys the toy takes over 90 percent and the child just fills in the blank.”
她並補充道：「玩玩具應是玩具只占10%，90%由小孩做主，許多這些電子玩具卻是玩具占了90%以上，小孩只能補白。」

Sosa said she was surprised by the results. She had expected some parent-baby pairs would talk more with one type of toy, while others would talk more with another.
索沙說，她對結果感到驚訝。她原本預期一些父母嬰兒組玩某種玩具時說話較多，而其他組則是在玩另種玩具時說較多話。

But the results were consistent almost across the board. When electronic toys were being used, parents said about 40 words per minute, on average, compared with 56 words per minute for traditional toys and 67 words per minute with books.
然而，結果卻幾乎一致。玩電子玩具時父母平均每分鐘說40字，少於玩傳統玩具的56字，及讀書時的67字。

The study was small – 26 families – and most were white and educated. So the researchers say the results might be different with a larger and more diverse group. But the study is notable because it sought to capture real world parent-child playtime in their homes without researchers watching.
這是個小型研究，共26個家庭參與，多為受過良好教育的白人家庭。因此研究人員說，若以更大、更多樣化的群體為研究對象，結果可能不同，但這個研究仍值得注意，因為它盡力捕捉現實世界中無研究人員觀看下的居家親子遊戲時間。

原文參照：
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/traditional-toys-may-beat-gadgets-in-language-development/

2016-01-31/聯合報/D2版/紐約時報賞析 陳韋廷譯

說文解字 看新聞 張佑生

頭韻（alliteration）是本篇報導的特點，押韻由句尾轉為字首，導言的whirring與whiz–bang，文中的gadgets與gizmos都是例子。

讀者從用字遣詞可看出作者對兒童電子玩具（electronic toys）的態度：whirring是連續發出低鳴聲；whiz-bang原指呼嘯聲，俚語則有「頂級」、「超炫」的意思。在報導中都只是gadget和gizmo，奇巧的新發明小玩意兒，噱頭居多。電影「玩命關頭」系列英文片名Fast & Furious也是頭韻的例子。

標榜促進兒童語言學習的電子玩具功能越炫，攸關認知發展的親子口語互動反而減少，因為家長變觀眾。Sideline原意是球場邊線，俚語on/from the sidelines意指「旁觀」，沒有實際介入。運動選手因負傷、生病不能上場的動詞也用sideline。

例如本季最後一次打NBA明星賽的洛杉磯湖人隊球星布萊恩，曾入選但因傷無法上陣：Injuries have sidelined Kobe Bryant from some All-Star Games for which he was selected.

Study Gauges Impact of Weather Disasters on Crops
50年間1成穀物 毀於極端氣候
By Nicholas St. Fleur

Droughts and heat waves wiped out nearly a tenth of the rice, wheat, corn and other cereal crops in countries hit by extreme weather disasters between 1964 and 2007, according to a new study.
新研究報告指出，1964至2007年間受極端氣候災害衝擊的國家，稻米、小麥、玉米以及其他穀類作物幾乎有一成毀於旱災與熱浪。

The paper, published in Nature, examined data on the effects, over five decades, of extreme temperatures, floods and droughts on national crop harvests.
報告發表於「自然」期刊，檢視了50年來極端溫度、洪災及旱災影響全國農作收成的相關數據。

“People already knew that these extreme weather events had impacts on crop production,” said Navin Ramankutty, a geographer from the University of British Columbia and an author of the report. “But we didn’t know by how much, and we didn’t have a basis for how that might change in the future.”
報告作者之一、英屬哥倫比亞大學地理學家納文．拉曼庫堤說：「人們已經知道這些極端氣候事件會影響農作產量，但我們不知道影響有多大，我們沒有評斷未來可能如何變化的根據。」

Ramankutty and his team combined data from a disaster database with food production information from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. They looked at about 2,800 weather disasters, such as the 1983-1984 drought in Ethiopia and the 2003 European heat wave, along with data on 16 different cereals, including oats, barley, rye and maize, grown in 177 countries.
拉曼庫的團隊將災害資料庫內的數據跟聯合國糧農組織的糧食生產資訊結合。他們檢視了約2800個氣候災害，包括1983-1984年間的衣索匹亞旱災，以及2003年的歐洲熱浪。同時，他們也研究了177個國家栽種燕麥、大麥、黑麥、玉米等16種穀物的數據。

They found that droughts cut a country’s crop production by 10 percent, and heat waves by 9 percent, but that floods and cold spells had no effects on agricultural production levels. His team estimated a loss of more than 3 billion tons of cereal production from 1964 to 2007 as a result of droughts and heat waves.
他們發現旱災使一國農作物減產10%，熱浪則為9%，但洪災與寒流對農業產量水平沒有影響。他的團隊估計，受旱災與熱浪影響，1964年至2007年間穀類減產逾30億公噸。

“We don’t think about it much, but rice, wheat and maize alone provide more than 50 percent of global calories,” said Ramankutty. “When these grain baskets are hit, it results in food price shocks, which leads to increasing hunger.”
拉曼庫堤說：「我們對此並未深思，但光是稻米、小麥與玉米就提供了全球超過50%的熱量。當這些榖物生產受創，會導致糧價震盪，從而使飢荒日益嚴重。」

As the global population soars, food production will need to increase to feed the extra mouths. But if the world is to meet those demands, it must do so efficiently and sustainably, said Pedram Rowhani, a land-change scientist from the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, and another of the study’s authors.
隨著全球人口飆升，糧食生產也必須增加以養活多出的人。前述報告作者之一、英格蘭布萊頓的薩塞克斯大學土地變化科學家佩德藍．羅哈尼說，世界若要滿足這些需求，就得用有效且永續的方式來做。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/science/study-measures-damage-from-weather-disasters-on-cereal-crops.html

2016-01-31/聯合報/D2版/紐約時報賞析 陳韋廷譯