英国新闻听力 怎样抱婴儿（在线收听）

人们很早就研究发现，大多数有抱孩子经验的妇女和男士，都喜欢把小孩抱在左边。

注释：

cradle vt. 轻轻抱着 

cuddle v. 怀抱，拥抱 

in relation to 与……相比较，关于 

cognitive adj. 认知的，有感知的 

externalize v. 外表化，形象化

文本内容:

Cradling Babies

THE HOST: Now imagine you're picking up a baby, which side would you cradle it, on the left or the right?

Research has long established that most women and men, who have experience caring for babies, cradle on the left. And before you say, “oh that's because most people are right handed and they want to keep their right hand free for doing things.” It turns out that left handed people are also more likely to cradle babies on the left, so it makes no difference whether you're left or right handed. But new research just published in the “Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,” has found that stressed mothers are more likely to hold them the other way. Dr. Nadia Riceland, a psychologist at Durham University in the U.K, told me how she did the research.

DR. NADIA RICELAND: We ask the mother to just take the baby and cuddle the baby; I mean the mother could just take either side, you know and the mothers picked up the baby mostly uhh...to the left, and then hold has the baby to the left.

THE HOST: And then you looked at how well they seem to be getting on, how how stressed they seem to be?

DR. NADIA RICELAND: Yeah...and then I, and that is the only study I know of...you know, which actually looked at the difference between mothers who are stressed and mothers who are depressed, and mothers who are both stressed and depressed and mothers who are neither stressed nor depressed.

THE HOST: And what did you find with the depressed mothers in this study?

DR. NADIA RICELAND: And now with my study which I then conducted okay. I actually found that the mothers who were depressed were cradling more to the left; the mothers who were stressed were cradling more to the right, and more means in relation to my normal group of mothers cradling...uhhh because a kind of established first of all, what was the relationship between right and left cradling in the mothers who were neither stressed nor...nor depressed in my group.

THE HOST: So if the people who are feeling stressed are cradling their baby on the other side from the side that the most people do it; does this suggest that...you know could this be representative of them finding it sort of difficult to communicate with their babies at all?

DR. NADIA RICELAND: Oh that would be really not...I mean that's such a nice thing, because I haven't heard that from anybody asking me this question. Ummmm...it ummm...I mean it's difficult to say that you know, but a mother who is depressed you know, will be actually communicating less with her baby, less able to be communicating, able to be communicating with her baby you know. And mothers who are stressed have been found to have problems with their babies as well, and the babies have later have cognitive developmental problems. So it could actually be that the mothers who are stressed and cradle on the right will be less able to communicate emotionally with their baby.

THE HOST: And could it happen the other way around? Could it be that there must be some reason why lots of people want to hold them on the left, and maybe this calms the baby down? So maybe by holding them on the wrong side, if you like, they're then...the baby's then feeling stressed, and the mother's then feeling stressed too?

DR. NADIA RICELAND: Or or...the mother ummm...I mean what I found in my other study, I didn’t look there in uhh stress and depression but I looked at which side the would mothers hold the baby on, how she...would she speak to the baby, and I found that when there was cradling to the right and speaking to the baby, they would speak with a higher pitch of voice, so..., and I interpreted it at...at the time that this actually meant that the mothers were more umm...externalizing you know, they were more interesting the baby in the outside world you know...trying to engage the baby more you see, whereas when they're holding the baby more on the left they're trying to sooth and calm the baby and not engage the outside world. So in a way by umm...having the baby on the right if you have got umm...I mean not too much stress of course actually means a positive thing you know, because you engage the baby.

THE HOST: So it's not necessarily that you want to teach everyone to hold them on the left? Its not there's a kind of right and wrong.

DR. NADIA RICELAND: No...There’s no right and wrong at all. I felt that this kind of way of actually finding that mother's cradled more to the right would be an indicator for health visitors, for example when they come into the home and they find that everything is a bit of a chaos, it might be that this mother is stress...you know stressed and then she observes that the mother also cradles her child on the right, then she can actually probe more into the mother's life and perhaps find out whether the mother is stressed, because then she wants to release that, if the mother is too stressed you know.

THE HOST: So it could be used as some kind of subtle indicator to them?

DR. NADIA RICELAND: Yes.

THE HOST: I mean you don’t want people to then sort of be judged on this, do you?

DR. NADIA RICELAND: No no! There’s no judgment at all involved, because it’s right to...I mean you can cradle on either side. It's really just an indicator which you might use in order to find out how this mother feels, so perhaps there's a mode to communicate that to you

THE HOST: Dr. Nadia Riceland from Durham University. That’s all for this week’s health check from the BBC, but I’ll be back at the same time next week.