首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
考研
As a species, humans are incredibly smart. Our intelligence comes with a curious caveat: our babies are among the dumbest—or, ra
As a species, humans are incredibly smart. Our intelligence comes with a curious caveat: our babies are among the dumbest—or, ra
admin
2023-02-22
41
问题
As a species, humans are incredibly smart. Our intelligence comes with a curious caveat: our babies are among the dumbest—or, rather, the most helpless—that exist. A baby giraffe can stand within an hour of birth, and can even potentially flee predators on its first day of life. A monkey can grasp its mother and hang on for protection and nourishment. A human infant can’t even hold up its own head.
However, as Kidd and Piantadosi argue in their new paper, published in a June issue of PNAS, hu-mans become so intelligent because human infants are so incredibly helpless; the one necessitates the other. The theory is startling, but it isn’t entirely new. Researchers have been pondering the peculiarities of our birth and its evolutionary significance for quite some time. Humans belong to the subset of mammals, called viviparous mammals, that give live birth to their young. This means that infants must grow to a mature enough state inside the body to be born, but they can’t be so big that they are unable to come out.【B11】_____________The brain, therefore, must keep maturing, and the head must continue growing, long after birth. The more intelligent an animal will eventually be, the more relatively immature its brain is at birth.
Researchers have long known about this trade-off, and about the connection between brain size and neural density and intelligence.【B12】_________________
Kidd and Piantadosi’s new idea is that increased helplessness in newborns mandates increased intelligence in parents—and that a runaway selection dynamic can account for both. Natural selection favors humans with large brains, because those humans tend to be smarter.【B13】__________
During their investigation, Kidd and Piantadosi realized something important that strengthened their theory. It turns out that another variable has an even higher correlation with intelligence than brain size—time to maturity, or weaning time.【B14】___________________Orangutans have smarter babies than baboons and they wean them longer. Baboon babies, in turn, are weaned longer, and are smarter, than lemur babies.
Putting these facts together helped Kidd and Piantadosi develop their hypothesis. The connection be-tween head size and intelligence does create incentives for babies to arrive earlier. But it’s the connection between weaning time and intelligence that may really be driving the cycle.【B15】__________________And so the cycle continues.
[A] As we grew smarter, we were better able to take care of our infants, so they could be born more helpless and allow us to grow even smarter. This is why the cycle happens to humans and not to lemurs.
[B] You need to be smarter to care for more helpless creatures, which means you need a larger brain— which means that babies have to enter the world at an even more helpless stage of development, since there is a finite size to their brain at birth, mandated by the physiology of live birth.
[C] In other words, the time it takes to shepherd newborns through absolute helplessness to a point of relative self-sufficiency predicts primate intelligence more strongly than the best measure that has previously been proposed, namely, head circumference.
[D] For instance, Robin Dunbar found that the ratio of neocortical volume to brain size can predict the social-group size in a number of species, including bats, cetaceans, and primates, while Simon Read-er has demonstrated links in tool use and innovation to brain size in primates.
[E] This may create evolutionary incentives for babies that are born at an even earlier developmental stage, which require more intelligence to raise. This creates the dynamic: over time, helpless babies make parents more intelligent, which makes babies more helpless, which makes their parents more intelligent, and so on.
[F] This leads to a trade-off: the more intelligent an animal is, the larger its head generally is, but the birth canal imposes an upper limit on just how large that head can be before it gets stuck.
[G] This is a contradiction. Humans are born quite helpless, far more so than any other primate, but, fairly early on, we start becoming quite smart, again far more so than any other primate.
【B11】
选项
答案
F
解析
空格前指出人类胎儿必须在母体内成长到足够成熟才能出生,可是胎儿又不能成长得太大,不然无法出世。空格后一句讲述在出生之后很长一段时间内,大脑必须不断成熟、长大,其中的therefore说明空格处是空格后所说的内容的缘由。F指出产道限制了婴儿头部的大小,这既是由空格前的内容导致的,也是空格后内容的原由,因此F用leads to来承接上文,同时使得下文的therefore衔接恰当,过渡连贯,自然顺畅。F中的This指代的是空格前提到的情形,而trade-off则与第三段的this trade-off相对应。故答案选F。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/7ZMD777K
0
考研英语一
相关试题推荐
"Juststicktoscience."ThisisacommonadmonitionthatSciencereceiveswhenwepublishcommentariesandnewsstoriesonpoli
"Juststicktoscience."ThisisacommonadmonitionthatSciencereceiveswhenwepublishcommentariesandnewsstoriesonpoli
Americahaslongbeenresistanttoadequatepovertypoliciesbecauseofitsstrongstrainofthinkingthatthepoorareresponsi
Americahaslongbeenresistanttoadequatepovertypoliciesbecauseofitsstrongstrainofthinkingthatthepoorareresponsi
Thinnerisn’talwaysbetter.Anumberofstudieshave【C1】________thatnormal-weightpeopleareinfactathigherriskofsomedi
WhydopeoplereadnegativeInternetcommentsanddootherthingsthatwillobviouslybepainful?Becausehumanshaveaninheren
Theworldisonthetopofastaggeringriseinthenumberofoldpeople,andtheywilllivelongerthaneverbefore.【C1】_______
Theworldisonthetopofastaggeringriseinthenumberofoldpeople,andtheywilllivelongerthaneverbefore.【C1】_______
Europeanbanks’fourth-quarterearnings,releasesofwhichareclusteredaroundearlyFebruary,havebeensurprisinglyoptimisti
ThefirstsoundeverwasthesoundoftheBigBang.And,surprisingly,itdoesn’treallysoundallthatbang-like.JohnCramer,
随机试题
生態系とは弱肉強食の単純な関係のように見えて、実はそうではない。食うものも食われるものも個体数が減少すれば一気に生態系が崩れてしまうという________なのだから。
A.肌梭的传入冲动增加,腱器官的传入冲动减少B.肌梭的传入冲动不变,腱器官的传入冲动增加C.肌梭的传入冲动增加,腱器官的传入冲动增加D.肌梭的传入冲动减少,腱器官的传入冲动不变当骨骼肌作等张收缩时
患者女,37岁,鼻塞、流脓涕10天,眼睑水肿2天。检查见眼睑肿胀,眼球活动正常,视力无下降,鼻内镜检查见鼻腔有较多脓性分泌物。正确的治疗方案是
符合IFG的诊断的是
开发周期较长的房地产,需求的价格弹性相应地比较小。()
韦克斯勒智力量表包括语言与操作两个部分。()
()是指国家行政机关依据法律的授权,按照司法程序,主持解决平等主体之间发生的与行政管理事项密切相关的特定的民事纠纷的一种具体行政行为。
(2009上软评)软件工程每一个阶段结束前,应该着重对可维护性进行复审。在系统设计阶段的复审期间,应该从______出发,评价软件的结构和过程。
A、Polishhisessay.B、Handinhisessay.C、Rewritehisessay.D、Writeashorteressay.C
【B1】【B17】
最新回复
(
0
)