《经济学人》双语：婴儿如何识别亲密关系？

原文标题：Child psychologyDrools of attractionBabies learn about people by looking at who shares saliva儿童心理学吸引人的口水婴儿通过观察谁分享唾液来了解人[Paragraph 1]THE COMPLEXITIES of human relations are difficult enough for adults to navigate—and they have at least some idea of the rules.Children have yet to learn those rules.

人际关系的复杂性足以让成年人难以驾驭，他们至少对规则有些了解。孩子们还没有学会这些规则。

Infants are, nonetheless, able quickly to identify close relationships between other people, and thus to build up a map of the social world around them.

尽管如此，婴儿能够快速识别其他人之间的亲密关系，从而建立起他们周围社会的关系地图。

How they do this has perplexed sociologists, anthropologists and developmental psychologists for decades.

婴儿是如何做到这一点的，这困扰了社会学家、人类学家和发展心理学家数十年。

In a paper just published in Science, Ashley Thomas of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology proposes a partial answer: slobber.在《科学》杂志刚刚发表的一篇论文中，麻省理工学院的阿什利·托马斯提出了部分答案：口水。

[Paragraph 2]To avoid the sexual connotations of the word “intimacy”, Dr Thomas and her team refer to the “thickness” of interactions between infants and adults—borrowing the term from Avishai Margalit, a philosopher.

为了避免“亲密”一词的性含义，托马斯博士和她的团队引用了哲学家阿维沙伊·马加利特的术语，提到婴儿和成人之间互动的“深厚度”。

Thick relationships involve strong attachments, obligations and mutual responsiveness.

深厚的关系包括强烈的依恋、义务和互相响应。

One set of cues for thick relationships relates to things that involve sharing saliva: kissing, for example, or the common use of an eating or drinking utensil.深厚关系的一组线索与分享唾液有关，例如：接吻，或常用的饮食器具。[Paragraph 3]To test whether children interpret saliva-sharing as indicating a thick relationship, the researchers recruited two groups of several dozen youngsters.

为了测试孩子们是否认为分享唾液意味着亲密关系，研究人员招募了两组几十名小孩子。

One was a set of babies aged between eight and ten months. The other was a group of toddlers aged between 16 and 18 months.

其中一组婴儿年龄在8到10个月之间。另一组是年龄在16到18个月之间的幼儿。

To avoid the hazards of covid-19, all tests were conducted over a video link.为了避免新冠的风险，所有的实验都是通过视频链接进行的。[Paragraph 4]Each child was shown a clip of an adult interacting with a puppet, followed by a clip of that puppet in distress while the same adult, and also a stranger, looked on.

每个孩子都会看到一个成年人与木偶互动的视频片段，然后看一个痛苦木偶的片段，而同一个成年人，也是一个陌生人，在旁观。

When the interaction in the first clip appeared to involve the sharing of saliva—with puppet and adult portrayed as taking consecutive bites from an orange—both sets of children looked mainly at that same adult in the second clip, and not the stranger, a reaction interpreted as a belief that the adult in question would offer comfort to the puppet.

当第一个片段中的互动似乎涉及到与木偶和成年人分享唾液时（木偶和成人在视频里表演连续咬桔子），两组儿童在第二个片段中主要看着同一个成年人，而不是陌生人，这一反应被认为是，孩子们相信实验中的成年人会给木偶带来安慰。

When the interaction in the first clip was friendly but less thick, such as passing a ball back and forth, the children had equal expectations of both adults when shown the second clip.

当第一个片段中的互动是友好的，但不太亲密，例如来回传球。当播放第二个片段时，孩子们对两个成年人的期望是相同的。

Saliva sharing seems, then, indicative of closeness.那么，唾液的分享似乎是亲密的象征。

[Paragraph 5]That conclusion was reinforced by subsequently replacing the puppet with a different one and repeating the second test.

随后用另一个把木偶替换了，并重复第二次实验，这一结论得到了证实。

In this case the children showed no consistent expectation about which adult would intervene to relieve the puppet’s distress.

在这种情况下，孩子们对哪一个成年人会干预以减轻木偶痛苦这件事，没有表现出一致的期望。

It thus seems to have been the act of sharing an orange with a specific puppet that triggered an expectation of future behaviour, rather than any inherent characteristics of the adults involved.因此，似乎是与特定的木偶共享一个橘子的行为触发了对未来行为的预期，而不是相关成年人的任何固有特征。[Paragraph 6]Conducting her experiment by video enabled Dr Thomas to cast her search for trial participants beyond Massachusetts.

通过视频进行实验，托马斯博士得以在马萨诸塞州以外地区寻找试验参与者。

She nevertheless decided, in this first instance, to confine things to the United States. Future runs, she hopes, will reach beyond that country’s borders.尽管如此，在一开始，她还是决定把实验参与者限定在美国。她希望，未来的研究将超越该国的边界。[Paragraph 7]The ethnographic literature suggests saliva-sharing is a widespread phenomenon.

人种学文献表明，唾液共享是一种普遍现象。

It also makes sense as a signal of intimacy, for its disease-spreading potential is obvious and engaging in it therefore indicates a high degree of trust between participants.

它作为亲密的信号也是有意义的，因为它的疾病传播潜力是显而易见的，因此参与其中表明参与者之间的高度信任。

But seeing how practice varies from place to place (if, indeed, it does), might illuminate some intriguing details.但由于各地实际情况各不相同（如果确实如此的话），可能会揭示一些有趣的细节。（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量540左右）原文出自：2022年1月22日《经济学人》Science & technology版块精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路本文翻译整理：Irene本文编辑校对: Irene仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【重点句子】（3个）

To avoid the hazards of covid-19, all tests were conducted over a video link.为了避免新冠的风险，所有的实验都是通过视频链接进行的。Saliva sharing seems, then, indicative of closeness.那么，唾液的分享似乎是亲密的象征。Engaging in it therefore indicates a high degree of trust between participants.因此参与其中表明参与者之间的高度信任。

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