阅读理解
It's every parent's worst nightmare there's
a fire in the house, the alarms are beeping, but the children are sleeping on.
Now scientists have found a better way to rouse slumbering youngsters.
Researchers in the US have discovered that playing a child a recording of his
mother's voice is about three times more likely to wake him up than a
traditional alarm.
Writing in the Journal of Pediatrics, Smith
and colleagues report how they compared the effects of four different smoke
alarms on 176 children aged between 5 and 12 years old, none of whom had
hearing difficulties or were taking any medication that affected their sleep.
While one alarm featured a high-pitched beep the sort of commonly found in
households the other three featured the voice of the child's mother calling
either the child's name, giving instructions such as: "Wake up! Leave the
room! ", or both. Each child slept in a lab-based room that resembled a
real bedroom.
The results show that vocal alarms appear to
be more effective than high-pitched beeps. About 90% of children woke for a
voice alarm compared with just over 53% for the traditional alarm.
“High pitched beeping alarms don't wake up children well at all under
about 12 years of age, "said Dr Gary Smith, a co-author of the research
from the Nationwide Children's hospital in Ohio, although
he said at present it is not known why. He said it
was important to look at developing better alarms.
Prof Niamh Nic Daeid, director of the
Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science at the University of Dundee,
said the research found a human voice combined with a low-frequency pulsing
tone was far more effective in waking up children than a traditional
high-pitched alarm. She also noted that more work was needed to explore whether
other familiar sounds, such as a dog barking, might also prove effective in
rousing children.