新高级阅读前（双语）38（994）

PASSAGE THIRTY-EIGHT

Acute stress

1.A new review based on a research shows that acute stress affects the way the brain considers the advantages and disadvantages, causing it to focus on pleasure and ignore the possible negative consequences of a decision.

2.The research suggests that stress may change the way people make choices in predictable ways.

3.“Stress affects how people learn,” says Professor Mara Mather. “People learn better about positive than negative outcomes under stress.”

4.For example, two recent studies looked at how people learned to connect images with either rewards or punishments.

5.In one experiment, some of the participants were first stressed by having to give a speech and do difficult math problems in front of an audience; in the other, some were stressed by having to keep their hands in ice water.

6.In both cases, the stressed participants remembered the rewarded material more accurately and the punished material less accurately than those who hadn’t gone through the stress.

7.This phenomenon is likely not surprising to anyone who has tried to resist eating cookies or smoking a cigarette while under stress—at those moments, only the pleasure associated with such activities comes to mind.

8.But the findings further suggest that stress may bring about a double effect. Not only are rewarding experiences remembered better, but negative consequences are also easily recalled.

9.The research also found that stress appears to affect decision—making differently in men and women.

10.While both men and women tend to focus on rewards and less on consequences under stress, their responses to risk turn out to be different.

11.Men who had been stressed by the cold-water task tended to take more risks in the experiment while women responded in the opposite way.

12.In stressful situations in which risk-taking can pay off big, men may tend to do better; when caution weighs more, however, women will win.

13.This tendency to slow down and become more cautious when decisions are risky might also help explain why women are less likely to become addicted than men.

14.They may more often avoid making the risky choices that eventually harden into addiction.

第三十八章

急性压力

1.一项基于研究的新研究表明，急性压力会影响大脑思考利弊的方式，导致它专注于快乐，而忽略了一个决定可能带来的负面后果。

2.研究表明，压力可能会改变人们以可预测的方式做出选择的方式。

3.“压力影响人们的学习方式，”玛拉·马瑟教授说。“在压力下，人们对积极结果的了解要比消极结果的了解更多。”

4.例如，最近的两项研究着眼于人们如何学会将图像与奖励或惩罚联系起来。

5.在一项实验中，一些参与者首先因为必须在观众面前演讲和做数学题而感到压力;在另一组中，一些人因为把手放在冰水中而感到压力。

6.在这两种情况下，与没有经历过压力的参与者相比，有压力的参与者对奖励材料的记忆更准确，而对惩罚材料的记忆则更不准确。

7.对于那些在压力下试图抵制吃饼干或抽烟的人来说，这种现象可能并不奇怪，在这些时刻，脑海中只会出现与这些活动相关的乐趣。

8.但研究结果进一步表明，压力可能会带来双重影响。不仅有益的经历更容易被记住，负面的结果也更容易被回忆起来。

9.研究还发现，压力对男性和女性决策的影响似乎有所不同。

10.尽管在压力下，男性和女性都倾向于关注回报而不是后果，但他们对风险的反应却有所不同。

11.在实验中，受到冷水任务压力的男性倾向于承担更多风险，而女性则相反。

12.在有压力的情况下，冒险可以带来巨大的回报，男性可能会做得更好;然而，当谨慎更为重要时，女性将获胜。

13.当做出有风险的决定时，女性往往会放慢脚步，变得更加谨慎，这可能也有助于解释为什么女性比男性更不容易上瘾。

        14.他们可能会更经常地避免做出最终会上瘾的冒险选择。