Final exams are around the comer — but that won’t stop some teenagers putting in the least effort. This may be because their brains aren’t developed enough to properly assess how high the stakes (利害关系) are, and adapt their behaviour accordingly.
Catherine Insel, at Harvard University, and her team asked adolescents between the ages of 13 and 20 to play a game while monitoring their brains. In some rounds of the game,participants could earn 20 cents fora correct response, while an incorrect one would cost them 10 cents. But in rounds with higher stakes,correct responses were worth a dollar, and wrong answers lost the participants 50 cents.
The team found that while the older volunteers performed better in the high stakes rounds, the younger ones didn’t — their performance didn’t change in line with whether the stakes were low or high. And the older the volunteers were, the more improved their performance was.
When the team looked at the brain activity of the volunteers,they found that their ability to improve their performance was linked to how developed their brains were. A region in the brain, which continues to develop until we are at least 25 years old, seemed to be particularly important. The findings explain why some teenagers are so unconcerned when it comes to hazardous behaviors, such as driving too fast, for instance, especially when one of their friends is nearby.
Insel thinks schools should reconsider the way they test performance in teenagers. “This study suggests it’s not a good idea to evaluate school performance in a single final exam”, she says. A better idea would be to use a variety of smaller tests, conducted throughout the year.
It’s not all bad news for teens, though. Teenagers put the same amount of effort into tasks that aren’t “important”, and start to prefer hobbies to school. It could be a good thing, allowing teenagers to learn complex social skills, for example.
【小题1】Why did the researchers set different bets in the game?| A．To teach how to make money. |
| B．To better monitor participants’ brains. |
| C．To show the varied risk levels of the game. |
| D．To meet the needs of different participants. |
| A．Dangerous. | B．Abusive. |
| C．Specific. | D．Addictive. |
| A．It should not be judged by only one exam. |
| B．The items in exams should not be too difficult. |
| C．Exam-focused education should not be adopted. |
| D．Examination is not a good means of evaluating students. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Favorable. | C．Doubtful. | D．Negative. |
