這是我今天遇到的三篇 閱讀
並且附上 疑似原文的連結 ( 藍色部分 是考試時 RC 文章出現的 但其他也可以理解一下 )
希望對大家有幫助 大家加油 
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2008-03-children-memory-reliable-adults-court.html
小孩跟大人對犯罪事件的記憶
The U.S. legal system has long assumed that all testimony is not equally credible, that some witnesses are more reliable than others. In tough cases with child witnesses, it assumes adult witnesses to be more reliable. But what if the legal system had it wrong?
Researchers Valerie Reyna, human development professor, and Chuck Brainerd, human development and law school professor-- both from Cornell University -- argue that like the two-headed Roman god Janus, memory is of two minds -- that is, memories are captured and recorded separately and differently in two distinct parts of the mind.
They say children depend more heavily on a part of the mind that records, "what actually happened," while adults depend more on another part of the mind that records, "the meaning of what happened." As a result, they say, adults are more susceptible to false memories, which can be extremely problematic in court cases.
Reyna's and Brainerd's research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), sparked more than 30 follow-up memory studies (many also funded by NSF), which the researchers review in an upcoming issue of Psychological Bulletin.
This research shows that meaning-based memories are largely responsible for false memories, especially in adult witnesses. Because the ability to extract meaning from experience develops slowly, children are less likely to produce these false memories than adults, and are more likely to give accurate testimony when properly questioned.
The finding is counterintuitive; it doesn't square with current legal tenets, and may have important implications for legal proceedings.
"Because children have fewer meaning-based experience records, they are less likely to form false memories," says Reyna. "But the law assumes children are more susceptible to false memories than adults."
The court's reliance on adult testimony has a long history. Before the early 1970s, children younger than eight years old rarely testified, because they failed the court's competency requirements.
Then in the 1970s, when statistics showed an increase in the number of child abuse cases, courts were forced to allow the testimony of young victims, only to reemphasize adult testimony in the 1990s, when some children's testimony was proven to be unreliable.
"Courts give witness instructions to tell the truth and nothing but the truth," says Brainerd. "This assumes witnesses will either be truthful or lie, but there is a third possibility now being recognized - false memories."
According to Brainerd, "Things are about to change radically."
Fuzzy Trace Theory
Traditional theories of memory assume a person's memories are based on event reconstruction, especially after delays of a few days, weeks, or months. However, Reyna and Brainerd's Fuzzy Trace Theory hypothesizes that people store two types of experience records or memories: verbatim traces and gist traces.
Verbatim traces are memories of what actually happened. Gist traces are based on a person's understanding of what happened, or what the event meant to him or her. Gist traces stimulate false memories because they store impressions of what an event meant, which can be inconsistent with what actually happened.
False memories can be identified when witnesses accurately describe what they remember but those memories are proven false based on other unimpeachable facts.
"When gist traces are especially strong, they can produce phantom recollections -- that is, illusory, vivid recollections of things that did not happen, such as remembering a robber brandished a weapon and made threatening statements," says Reyna.
Brainerd argues that because witness testimony is the primary evidence in criminal prosecutions, false memories are a dominant reason for convictions of innocent people.
Recently, in Cook County, Ill., more than 200 murder confessions were identified as being based on adult's false memory reports because they conflicted with unimpeachable facts. For example, a person may have falsely remembered being in one location, but a sales receipt showed that he was in another location at the same time a crime was committed.
In child abuse cases where the law gives the benefit of the doubt to adult testimony, the results can be even more disconcerting. "Failure to recognize differences in how adults and children produce memory unfairly tilts the U.S. legal system against child witnesses," says Reyna.
"Children do not have the same fullness of emotional and intellectual experience as do adults when it comes to deriving meaning from situations," says Reyna. "So, meaning-based memory is less likely to influence a child's testimony."
The researchers say their transformative "two-mind" memory approach can reduce the number of false memories in court cases and give more validity to children's testimony.
Memory Science
Reyna and Brainerd developed several mathematical models associated with Fuzzy Trace Theory that can be used to predict memory outcomes in both adults and children.
The models, which test memory, have been used to determine ways in which attorneys, investigators, law enforcement officials and others can ask questions to help people access verbatim memories while suppressing false memories. The researchers say using neutral prompts to cue witnesses can help them remember what actually happened.
Reyna and Brainerd also say returning a witness to the scene of an event in a highly neutral way can cue verbatim memories and help the legal process.
The models provide the most accurate information to date on the causes of false memories. Using them, researchers can determine with surprising accuracy when a person accesses both verbatim and gist memory.
第二篇
會飛的鳥的演化史 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/origin-of-bird-flight-exp/ Traditionally, scholars have advanced two theories for how bird flight evolved. One of these, dubbed the arboreal model, holds that it developed in a tree-dwelling ancestor that was built for gliding but started flapping to extend its air time. The other, known as the cursorial theory, posits that flight arose in small, bipedal terrestrial theropod dinosaurs that sped along the ground with arms outstretched and leaped into the air while pursuing prey or evading predators. Feathers on their forelimbs enhanced lift, thereby allowing the creatures to take wing. As the idea that birds descended from dinosaurs gained acceptance by all but a few paleontologists, so too did the cursorial hypothesis. But both the arboreal and the cursorial scenarios have explanatory gaps. As far as tree dwellers go, of the hundreds of nonavian gliding vertebrates around today, not one flaps its appendages. And why would natural selection have favored the development of little protowings in a theropod equipped with heavily muscled legs for running across the ground? Neither theory, Dial asserts, adequately addresses the step-by-step adaptations that led to fully developed flight mechanics. Dial's eureka moment came after learning that partridges and their fellow ground birds routinely abandon terra firma in favor of trees and other elevated spots for safety. Although these animals appear to fly up into trees, he found on closer inspection that in many cases they were actually running up--legs bent and body pitched toward the tree--while flapping their wings. Subsequent research revealed that wing flapping assists in this vertical running by sticking the bird to the side of the tree, much as a spoiler helps to press a race car to a track. Although the adult ground birds are generally perfectly capable of flying up trees, their preference for running may stem from a time early in life when they couldn't yet fly: before a baby ground bird has the ability to launch itself into the air, the only means it has for getting off the ground is vertical running. And as Dial's experiments show, when a juvenile is trying to evade a predator this way, the aid of even a partially formed wing can mean the difference between life and death. Perhaps a bird ancestor's protowing conferred the same benefit, he suggests, and therefore natural selection favored its development. Over time, wings evolved to the point of enabling not only vertical running but, when employed by an animal running across the ground, flight. So far Dial's model has ruffled few feathers. Living animals do not necessarily make good models of extinct ones, however. "Is that the way bird ancestors did it? Well, maybe, maybe not," comments Kevin Padian of the University of California at Berkeley. "But [Dial] is showing that it's possible." For his part, Dial is leaving it to the paleontologists to figure out whether his theory of the genesis of avian flight jibes with future fossil finds--or whether it's for the birds.
第三篇 , 是在講 有關於 這個理論, 但是 至於其他 第三段 跟第四段 說了甚麼我有點記不清了  但可以瞭解一下 這個背景 所以我還是放上了 The Aquatic Ape Theory (AAT) is ‘one of the more successful’ alternatives to orthodox human evolution theory.1 The mainstream theory, called the African Savannah model (or just the Savannah Theory), teaches that human ancestors were once arboreal apes that descended from the trees to live on the African Savannah. Contrary to ST, AAT argues that, during the one major gap in the human fossil record,2 human ancestors called Homo aquaticus once existed in a semi-aquatic phase in lakes and rivers.3 Morgan argues that this time of history, which she calls the aquatic period, occurred when a large area of what is now continental Africa was flooded.4 The theory’s main argument is that humans possess many physical adaptations that appear to be very much out of place for Savannah dwellers—but these same traits make perfect sense if they are considered adaptations to a water environment.5 The most prominent spokesperson for AAT is
AAT was first discussed in print by Max Westenhöfer, a German scientist who proposed the idea in the 1940s.
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发表于 2019-1-24 22:38:35
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