题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通
福建省南平市2019—2020学年高二下学期英语期末质量检测试卷
Having an older brother comes with plenty of benefits. Big brothers tend to look out for their younger siblings, and except for the occasional rocky moment here and there, many siblings enjoy life-long close relationships. However, a new study finds an interesting downside: children with older brothers take longer when it comes to developing language skills.
The study, led by a group of researchers in Paris, France, builds upon a former research which showed that having older siblings is associated with poor linguistic development. Now, researchers say they have come to a more specific conclusion: only children with an older brother have these linguistic difficulties.
One would think that children with older brothers would grow up around more conversation on a daily basis, thus speeding up their language development. Yet researchers say such children actually take longer than their older brothers to begin developing these skills. Researchers studied more than 1,000 children from birth to the age of five-and-a-half years old. Each child's language skills were tested at ages 2, 3, and 5.5, using tests specially designed to measure numerous aspects of language development. What the research team discovered was significant: children with an older brother had, on average, a two-month delay in their language development compared to studied children with an older sister.
As far as explaining this, researchers have put forward two hypotheses. The first is that older sisters tend to talk more often than older brothers, which would make up for parents being less present than they were for their first child. The second hypothesis is that older sisters usually compete with their siblings less than older brothers for their parents' attention.
Up till now, the study's authors say they can't say for certain why children with older brothers have a harder time developing language skills. In the future they would like to know if culture or location affects these results.
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