Asanyplanepassengerwillconfirm,acryingbabyisalmostimpos...

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As any plane passenger will confirm, a crying baby is almost impossible to ignore, no matter how hard you try. Now scientists believe they may have worked out why. A baby’s cry pulls at the heartstrings(扣人心弦) in a way while other cries don’t, researchers found.

Researchers found that a baby’s cry can trigger unique emotional responses in the brain, making it impossible for us to ignore them---whether we are parents or not. Other types of cries, including calls of animals in great pain, fail to get the same response---suggesting the brain is programmed to respond specifically to a baby’s cry.

A team of Oxford University scientists scanned the brains of 28 men and women as they listened to a variety of calls and cries. After 100 milliseconds two parts of the brain that respond to emotion lit up. Their response to a baby’s cry was particularly strong. The response was seen in both men and women—even if they had no children.

Researcher Dr Christine Parsons said, “You might read that men should just notice a baby and step over it and not see it, but it’s not true. There is a special processing in men and women, which makes sense from an evolutionary(演变的) view that both men and women would be responding to these cries.” The study was in people who were not parents, yet they are all responding at 100ms to these particular cries, so this might be a fundamental response present in all of us regardless of parental status.

Researcher Katie Young said it may take a bit longer for someone to recognize their own child’s cries because they need to do more “fine-grained analysis”. The team had previously found that our reactions speed up when we hear a baby crying. Adults performed better on computer games when they heard the sound of a baby crying than after they heard recordings of adults crying.

21. A baby’s cry is difficult to ignore because it _____.

A. keeps on crying B. cries harder than adults

C. causes people great pain D. makes people feel strong emotions

22. The underlined word “trigger” in Paragraph 2 probably means “_____”

A. remove B. avoid C. cause D. Cure

23. What may Christine Parsons agree to?

A. Almost everyone makes certain response to a baby’s cries.

B. A crying baby makes no sense to people without children.

C. Men pay less attention to a crying baby than women.

D. Parents can hardly recognize their own babies’ cry.

24. Computer games are mentioned in the text to show _____.

A. players’ different reactions to a crying baby