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
66
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.
【B12】
选项
答案
D
解析
空格前指出长期以来,研究人员都了解脑容量、神经密度和智力之间的联系,而各选项中,只有D的内容与之相关。D的两个例子谈论的就是脑容量、神经密度和智力之间的联系:第一个例子中的the ratio of neocortical volume to brain size讲的是脑容量和神经密度之间的联系;第二个例子中的links in tool use and innovation to brain size说的是脑容量和智力之间的联系。这两个例子都是对空格前观点的论证,故D为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/KZMD777K
0
考研英语一
相关试题推荐
"Juststicktoscience."ThisisacommonadmonitionthatSciencereceiveswhenwepublishcommentariesandnewsstoriesonpoli
Firstitwaspets,thenfish.Nowit’spoultryandpigs.The【C1】________ofanimalsallowedtofeedoninsectsisgrowing.Anew
Firstitwaspets,thenfish.Nowit’spoultryandpigs.The【C1】________ofanimalsallowedtofeedoninsectsisgrowing.Anew
Firstitwaspets,thenfish.Nowit’spoultryandpigs.The【C1】________ofanimalsallowedtofeedoninsectsisgrowing.Anew
Writeanessaybasedonthechartbelow.Inyourwritingyoushould1)interpretthechart,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshoul
EmerginginthelateSixtiesandreachingapeakintheSeventies,LandArtwasoneofarangeofnewforms,includingBodyArt,
Thinnerisn’talwaysbetter.Anumberofstudieshave【C1】________thatnormal-weightpeopleareinfactathigherriskofsomedi
WhydopeoplereadnegativeInternetcommentsanddootherthingsthatwillobviouslybepainful?Becausehumanshaveaninheren
Theworldisonthetopofastaggeringriseinthenumberofoldpeople,andtheywilllivelongerthaneverbefore.【C1】_______
Theworldisonthetopofastaggeringriseinthenumberofoldpeople,andtheywilllivelongerthaneverbefore.【C1】_______
随机试题
Thefilmwasa________:itselementswereassembledmoreorlesshaphazardlyfromadozenofdifferentsources.
腰椎间盘突出症最常发生于
政府参与金融市场,主要是通过发行债券和股票筹集资金。()
某外商投资企业2006年取得利润总额为5000万元,其中营业外收支和投资收益项目已列收支为:通过民政部门向灾区捐赠款物价值100万元,直接资助当地某高校研究开发经费60万元,国债利息收入20万元。根据外商投资企业和外国企业所得税法律制度的规定,该外商投资企
当代教学方法种类繁多,千差万别,但也体现出一些共同基本特征。下列选项中,不属于当代教学方法基本特征的是()。
地动仪发明于哪个朝代?()
天地悠悠悬秤杆,百姓芸芸秤砣心。严纲纪、正作风是一场大手术,唯有___________才能___________。填入画横线部分最恰当的一项是()。
Writeanessayofabout200wordsbasedontheinformationgivenintheoutlinebelow.1)Importanceofconfidence;2)Causesfor
公认
中国有3亿辆自行车。在一些城市有专门的路是给骑自行车和摩托车的人用的。传统的人力车,一种两个轮子靠人拉的车,已经被三轮车取代了。中国有些地方是用三轮车的。说好旅程的价钱以后,三轮车司机就带着旅客开始短途旅行。北京的交通又堵又慢。公共汽车、小汽车、出租车、自
最新回复
(
0
)