TED演讲:电子游戏中的大脑(4)

 　　You all know about multitasking.  你们都知道"多任务处理"(multitasking)。

　　You all have been faulty of multitasking when you're driving and you pick up your cellphone. 一边开车一边拿起手机的多任务处理不是明智之举。

　　Bad idea. Very bad idea.  非常糟糕。

　　Why? Because as your attention shifts to your cell phone,  为什么？因为你的注意力实际上转移到了你的手机上，

　　you are actually losing the capacity to react swiftly to the car braking in front of you 于是不能对前面的车况做出敏捷的反应。

　　and so you're much more likely to get engaged into a car accident. 所以你出车祸的可能性大大增加了。

　　Now, we can measure that kind of skills in the lab.  现在我们可以在实验室中测量这种能力。

　　We obviously don't ask people to drive around and see how many car accidents they have. 我们当然不会让人开着车到处跑

　　That would be a little costly¹ proposition. 然后看看会出几场车祸。这个方案代价有点高。

　　But we design tasks on the computer where we can measure, 但是我们可以通过特殊设计的电脑程序

　　to millisecond accuracy, how good they are at switching from one task to another. 精确到以毫秒为单位测量，考察人们能多快地在不同任务间切换。

　　When we do that, we actually find that people  当我们做这样的实验的时候，我们发现

　　that play a lot of action games are really, really good.  玩很多动作电子游戏的人完成得真的非常非常好。

　　They switch really fast, very swiftly. They pay a very small cost.  他们在任务间的切换非常快速敏捷。他们所付出的代价很小。

　　Now I'd like you to remember that result, 现在，我希望大家记住这个结论，

　　and put it in the context of another group of technology users, 把它带入到另外一群科技使用者的背景下。

　　a group which is actually much revered² by society, which are people that engage in multimedia-tasking. 这些可以“多媒体任务处理”的人相当受社会推崇。

　　What is multimedia-tasking? 什么叫“多媒体任务处理”？

　　It's the fact that most of us, most of our children, 我们中的很多人，还有很多孩子

　　are engaged with listening to music at the same time as they're doing search on the web 都会一边听着音乐一边上网搜索信息

　　at the same time as they're chatting on Facebook with their friends.  一边和朋友在脸谱网上聊天。

　　That's a multimedia-tasker.  这就是可以“多媒体任务处理”的人。

　　There was a first study done by colleagues at Stanford  有一个试验由斯坦福的研究人员们先做，

　　and that we replicated³ that showed that  我们又进行了重复试验过的研究表明

　　those people that identify as being high multimedia-taskers are absolutely abysmal⁴ at multitasking. 被认为是高效的“多媒体任务处理者”多任务处理的能力非常糟糕。

　　When we measure them in the lab, they're really bad.  他们在实验室里被测量的表现真的很差。

　　Right? So these kinds of results really makes two main points. 这样的结果主要说明了两个问题。

　　The first one is that not all media are created equal.  第一，不是所有的媒体都生来平等。

　　You can't compare the effect of multimedia-tasking and the effect of playing action games. 不能比较多媒体处理对人的影响和玩动作电子游戏对人的影响进行比较。

　　They have totally different effects on different aspects of cognition, perception and attention. 他们对于认知，知觉和注意力的影响都是完全不同的。

　　Even within video games,  就算是在电子游戏之中，

　　I'm telling you right now about these action-packed video games. 我指的是动作电子游戏中，

　　Different video games have a different effect on your brains.  不同的游戏对你的大脑的影响也是不同的。

　　So we actually need to step into the lab and really measure what is the effect of each video game. 所以我们需要在实验室中测量每个游戏的影响分别是什么。

　　The other lesson is that general wisdom carries no weight.  第二，所谓的常识很多时候是不靠谱的。

　　I showed that to you already, like we looked at the fact that  像我刚才讲到的

　　despite a lot of screen time, those action gamers have a lot of very good vision, etc. 虽然动作电子游戏的玩家长时间看屏幕，但他们的视力依然很好就是例子之一。

　　Here, what was really striking is that these undergraduates  现在最让人担忧的是那些

　　that actually report engaging in a lot of high multimedia-tasking are convinced they aced⁵ the test. 常常多媒体任务处理的大学生们深信他们表现得很好。

　　So you show them their data, you show them they are bad  你把他们的数据给他们看，告诉他们其实他们表现得不怎么样，

　　and they're like, "Not possible." 但是他们觉得那根本不可能。

　　You know, they have this sort of gut⁶ feeling that, really, 他们却觉得实际上

　　they are doing really, really good.  自己做得非常非常好。

　　That's another argument for why we need to step into the lab  这也是为什么我们需要在实验室里

　　and really measure the impact of technology on the brain.  真正地去测量科技对于大脑的影响。

1 costly   

adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的

参考例句：

• It must be very costly to keep up a house like this.维修这么一幢房子一定很昂贵。
• This dictionary is very useful,only it is a bit costly.这本词典很有用，左不过贵了些。

2 revered   

v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• A number of institutions revered and respected in earlier times have become Aunt Sally for the present generation. 一些早年受到尊崇的惯例，现在已经成了这代人嘲弄的对象了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Chinese revered corn as a gift from heaven. 中国人将谷物奉为上天的恩赐。 来自辞典例句

3 replicated   

复制( replicate的过去式和过去分词 )； 重复； 再造； 再生

参考例句：

• Later outplant the seedlings in a replicated permanent test plantation. 以后苗木出圃栽植成重复的永久性试验林。
• The phage has replicated and the donor cells have lysed. 噬菌体已复制和给体细胞已发生裂解。

4 abysmal   

adj.无底的，深不可测的，极深的；糟透的，极坏的；完全的

参考例句：

• The film was so abysmal that I fell asleep.电影太糟糕，看得我睡着了。
• There is a historic explanation for the abysmal state of Chinese cuisine in the United States.中餐在美国的糟糕状态可以从历史上找原因。

5 aced   

vt.发球得分（ace的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• I don't know how I aced in, I was lucky enough. 我不知道这好事怎么让我给碰上了，我够幸运的。 来自互联网
• He aced every physical fitness test they gave him. 他顺利通过了他们对他所作的每项体格检查。 来自互联网

6 gut   

n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏

参考例句：

• It is not always necessary to gut the fish prior to freezing.冷冻鱼之前并不总是需要先把内脏掏空。
• My immediate gut feeling was to refuse.我本能的直接反应是拒绝。