2007年 Text 1
原文：If you were to examine the birth certificates of every soccer player in 2006’s World Cup tournament, you would most likely find a noteworthy quirk: elite soccer players are more likely to have been born in the earlier months of the year than in the late months. If you then examined the European national youth teams that feed the World Cup and professional ranks, you would find this strange phenomenon to be ever more pronounced.
翻译：如果检查一下2006年世界杯足球锦标赛所有参赛运动员的出生证明，你很可能会发现一个值得注意的怪现象：出色的足球运动员往往在一年中的头几个月出生。如果再关注一下为世界杯和职业球队输送人才的欧洲国家青年队，你会发现这一现象更加明显。
原文：What might account for this strange phenomenon? Here are a few guesses: a) certain astrological signs confer superior soccer skills;b) winter-born babies tend to have higher oxygen capacity, which increases soccer stamina; c) soccer-mad parents are more likely to conceive children in springtime, at the annual peak of soccer mania; d) none of the above.
翻译：对这一奇怪现象该做何解释呢？以下是几种猜想：(a) 某些星座的人更具有足球天赋。(b) 冬季出生的孩子往往具有较大的氧容量，这增强了他们在足球运动中的耐力。(c) 对足球狂热的父母容易在春天怀孕，因为那是一年中足球狂热的高峰期。(d) 以上猜想都不对。
原文：Anders Ericsson, a 58-year-old psychology professor at Florida State University, says he believes strongly in “none of the above.”Ericsson grew up in Sweden, and studied nuclear engineering until he realized he would have more opportunity to conduct his own research if he switched to psychology. His first experiment, nearly 30 years ago, involved memory: training a person to hear and then repeat a random series of numbers. “With the first subject, after about 20 hours of training, his digit span had risen from 7 to 20,” Ericsson recalls. “He kept improving, and after about 200 hours of training he had risen to over 80 numbers.”
翻译：58岁的安德斯?埃里克森是佛罗里达州立大学的心理学教授，他坚信以上推测均不成立。埃里克森成长于瑞典，开始时学习核工程，后来他意识到如果转学心理学，会获得更多进行专业研究的机会。大约30年前他进行了第一次试验，与记忆力相关：训练一个人听一系列任意选择的数字然后让他进行重复。埃里克森回忆说，“第一个被测试对象在经过了约20个小时的训练以后，他所记住的数字从7个增至20个。他不断地进步，经过约 200个小时的训练以后，他能记住80多个数字。”
原文：This success, coupled with later research showing that memory itself is not genetically determined, led Ericsson to conclude that the act of memorizing is more
of a cognitive exercise than an intuitive one. In other words, whatever inborn differences two people may exhibit in their abilities to memorize, those differences are swamped by how well each person “encodes” the information. And the best way to learn how to encode information meaningfully, Ericsson determined, was a process known as deliberate practice. Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.
翻译：这次实验的成功以及后来的研究都表明，记忆力本身并不是由遗传决定的。埃里克森由此得出这样的结论：记忆行为与其说是一种直觉活动，不如说是一种认知活动。换句话说，不论两个人在记忆能力方面表现出什么先天性的差异，这些差异与个人“编码”信息的能力相比都显得无足轻重。埃里克森认为，学习按照意义编码信息的最佳方法是经历一个被称为“刻意练习”的过程。“刻意练习”不仅仅是简单地重复一项任务，它涉及到制定具体的目标、获得及时的反馈、方法和结果并重。
原文：Ericsson and his colleagues have thus taken to studying expert performers in a wide range of pursuits, including soccer. They gather all the data they can, not just performance statistics and biographical details but also the results of their own laboratory experiments with high achievers. Their work makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated.Or, put another way, expert performers—whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming—are nearly always made, not born.
翻译：埃里克森和他的同事由此开始对众多领域(包括足球领域)中的佼佼者进行研究。他们竭尽所能收集到的数据中，不仅包括工作绩效统计数字、成长细节、而且还包括他们的实验对象中表现优秀者的测试结果。他们的研究结论令人惊讶：我们对通常称之为“天赋”的遗传特征过分看重了。换句话说，不管是在记忆力、外科领域、芭蕾舞，还是在计算机编程方面表现出色的人几乎是后天培养的，而不是天生造就的。
Q128-考研英语阅读-2007 text1 全文翻译
