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标题：Babies learn about the world by looking at who shares saliva 幼儿通过观察分享唾液的人了解世界

类型：科技类

The complexities of human relations are difficult enough for adults to navigate—and they have at least some idea of the rules. Children have yet to learn those rules. Infants are, nonetheless, able quickly to identify close relationships between other people, and thus to build up a map of the social world around them. How they do this has perplexed sociologists, anthropologists and developmental psychologists for decades. In a paper just published in Science, Ashley Thomas of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology proposes a partial answer: slobber.

人类关系的复杂性对于成年人来说已经很难驾驭了，尽管他们至少已经了解到了人类关系的规则。然而儿童则需要去学习这些规则。然而婴儿能够快速识别其他人之间的亲密关系，并因此能建立他们的社交地图。他们是如何做到的让社会学家、人类学家和发展心理学家困惑了几十年。在一篇刚刚发表在Science的论文上，麻省理工学院的阿舍利·托马斯提供了部分答案：唾液。

To avoid the sexual connotations of the word “intimacy”, Dr Thomas and her team refer to the “thickness” of interactions between infants and adults—borrowing the term from Avishai Margalit, a philosopher. Thick relationships involve strong attachments, obligations and mutual responsiveness. One set of cues for thick relationships relates to things that involve sharing saliva: kissing, for example, or the common use of an eating or drinking utensil.

为了避免亲密的性方面的含义，托马斯博士和她的团队借用哲学家Avishai Margalit的词“厚度”来形容婴儿和承认之间的交流程度。较厚的关系包括更强的联系、责任和相互的响应能力。一系列对于较厚的关系的现象都与分享唾液有关，例如，亲吻或共用饮食和喝水的器具。

To test whether children interpret saliva-sharing as indicating a thick relationship, the researchers recruited two groups of several dozen youngsters. One was a set of babies aged between eight and ten months. The other was a group of toddlers aged between 16 and 18 months. To avoid the hazards of covid-19, all tests were conducted over a video link.

区为了测试儿童是否把唾液分享看作亲密关系的象征，研究人员招募了两组儿童，每组几十人。一组儿童是年龄在8到10个月的婴儿，另一组是16到18个月的婴儿。为了避免新冠肺炎的影响，所有的实验都是通过视频连线的方式进行的。

Each child was shown a clip of an adult interacting with a puppet, followed by a clip of that puppet in distress while the same adult, and also a stranger, looked on. When the interaction in the first clip appeared to involve the sharing of saliva—with puppet and adult portrayed as taking consecutive bites from an orange—both sets of children looked mainly at that same adult in the second clip, and not the stranger, a reaction interpreted as a belief that the adult in question would offer comfort to the puppet. When the interaction in the first clip was friendly but less thick, such as passing a ball back and forth, the children had equal expectations of both adults when shown the second clip. Saliva sharing seems, then, indicative of closeness.

每个儿童都观看了一组一个成年人和一个木偶交流的视频，接着又播放了一组视频内容是木偶处于悲伤之中，而两个成年人——刚才视频中的成年人和一个陌生人——在一旁看着。第一组视频中包含了分享口水的内容——成年人和木偶在同一个橘子上演绎了连咬了几口的场景——在第二组视频中，两组儿童主要看第一组视频出现过的承认，而不是陌生人。他们的反应表现出他们相信那个有问题的成年人回去安慰木偶。如果第一个视频中的交流表现友好但少些亲密，例如将球传来传去，儿童们会在观看第二组视频时对两个成年人都没有了之前的期待。因此，分享口水似乎是亲密关系的象征。

That conclusion was reinforced by subsequently replacing the puppet with a different one and repeating the second test. In this case the children showed no consistent expectation about which adult would intervene to relieve the puppet’s distress. It thus seems to have been the act of sharing an orange with a specific puppet that triggered an expectation of future behaviour, rather than any inherent characteristics of the adults involved.

随后的第二轮实验更换了一个不同的木偶，这一结论得到进一步作证。在这一次实验中，孩子们没有一致期待那个承认会介入去安慰木偶。因此似乎可以得出，因为与前一只木偶分享同一个句子的行为他们才产生了对于这个成年人未来行为的期待，而不是因为这个成年人的内在品质。

Conducting her experiment by video enabled Dr Thomas to cast her search for trial participants beyond Massachusetts. She nevertheless decided, in this first instance, to confine things to the United States. Future runs, she hopes, will reach beyond that country’s borders.

通过开展这一视频实验促使托马斯博士将她的参试者范围扩大到马萨诸塞州之外。然而这一次，她决定将第一次的范围限制在美国。未来她希望这一实验能超越国界。

The ethnographic literature suggests saliva·sharing is a widespread phenomenon. It also makes sense as a signal of intimacy, for its disease·spreading potential is ob·vious and engaging in it therefore indicates a high degree of trust between participants. But seeing how practice varies from place to place (if, indeed, it does), might illuminate some intriguing details.

根据人种学文献可知，唾液分享是一种普遍的现象。作为一种亲密关系的象征，这种行为具有一定的道理。因为唾液分享的疾病传播隐患是明显的，因此实施这一行为意味着对参与者的高度信任。但是因地而异的时间方式可能会展现一些有趣的细节。

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基础词和短语：

1.perplex  v.使疑惑；使为难

2.slobber  n.口水

3.saliva n.唾液

-派生：salivate  v.分泌唾液

salivary  adj.分泌唾液的

salivation  n.分泌唾液；汞中毒

4.connotation  n.内涵

5.intimacy  n.亲密

6.responsiveness  n.响应能力；同情心

7.utensil  n.用具。器具

8.inherent characteristic  内在品质