READING PASSAGE 13
TV ADDICTION
A 电动开瓶器The amount of time people spend watching television is astonishing,On average,individuals in the industrialised world devote three hours a day to the pursuit -fully half of their leisure time,and more than on any single activity save work and sleep.At this rate,someone who lives to 75 would spend nine years in front of the tube.To some commentators,this devotion means simply that people enjoy TV and make a conscious decision to watch it.But if that is the whole story,why do so many people experience misgivings about how much they view?In Gallup polls in 1992 and 1999,two out of five adult respondents and seven out of 10 teenagers said they spent too much time watching TV.Other surveys have consistently shown that roughly 10 percent of adults call themselves TV addicts.
B usb暖手鼠标垫To study people's reaction to TV,researchers have undertaken laboratory experiments in which they have monitored the brain waves(using an electroencephalograph ,or EEG) to tra ck behaviour and emotion in the normal course of life,as opposed to the artificial conditions of the lab.Participants carried beeper,and we signaled them six to eight times a day,at a random,over the period of a week ,whenever they heard the deep,they wrote down what they were doing and how they were feeling using a standardized scorecard.
C As one might expect,people who were watching TV when we beeped them reported and passive.The EEG studies similarly show less mental stimulation,as measured by alpha brain-wave production,during viewing than during reading.What is more surprising is that the sense of relaxation ends when the set is turned off ,but the feeling of passivity and lowered alertness continue.Survey participants say they have more difficulty concentrating after viewing than before.In contrast,they rarely indicate such difficulty after reading.After playing sports or engaging in hobbies ,people report improvements in mood.After watching TV,people's moods are about the same or worse than before.That may be because viewer's vague learned sense that they will feel less relaxed if they stop viewing .So they tend not to turn the set off.Viewing begets more viewing which is the same as the experience of habit-forming drugs.Thus,the irony of TV:people watch a great
deal longer they plan to ,even though prolonged viewing is less rewarding.In our ESM studies the longer people sat in front of the set,the less satisfaction they said derived from it.For some,a twinge of unease or guilt that they they aren't doing something more productive may also accompany and depreciate the enjoyment of prolonged viewing.Researchers in Japan,the U.K and the U.S have found that this guilt occurs much more among middle-class viewers than among less affluent ones.
D电渣重熔 What is it about TV that has such a hold on us? In part,the attraction seems to spring from our biological ' orienting response ' .First described by Ivan Pavlov in 1927,the orienting response in our instinctive visual or auditory reaction to any sudden or novel stimulus.It is part of our evolutionary heritage,a built-in sensitivity to movement and potential predatory threats.In 1986 Byron Reeves of Stanford University ,Esther Thorson of the University of Missouri and their colleagues began to study whether the simple formal features of television-cuts,edits,zooms,pans 灌肠袋
Sudden noises-activate the orienting response,thereby keeping attention on the screen.B
y watching how brain waves were affected by formal features,the researchers concluded that thease stylistic tricks can indeed trigger involutionary significance of It is the form,not the content,of television that is unique,'
E The natural attraction to television's sound and light starts very early in life,Dafna Lemish of Tel Aviu University has described babies at six to eight weeks attending to television.We have observed slightly older infants who,when lying on their backs on the floor,crane their necks around 180 degrees to catch what light through yonder window breaks.The inclination suggest deeply rooted the orienting response is.
碳化硅纳米线F The Experience Sampling Method permitted us to look at most every domain of everyday life:working,eating,reading,talking to friends,playing a sport ,and so on.We found that heavy viewers report feeling significantly more anxious and less happy than light viewers do in unstructured situations,such as doing nothing,daydreaming or waiting in line.The difference widens when the viewer is alone.Subsequently,Robert D. McIlwraith of the University of Mantitoba extensively studied those who called themselves TV addict
s on surveys.On a measure called the Short Imaginal Processess Inventory(SIPI),he found that the self described addicts are more easily bored and distract themselves from unpleasant thoughts and to fill time.Other studies over the years have shown that heavy viewers are less likely to participate in community activities and sports and are more likely to be obese than moderate viewers or non-viewers.
G More than 25 years ago psychologist Tannis M.MacBeth Williams of the University of British Columbia studied a moutain commutity that had no television until cable finally arrived.Over time,both adults and children in the town became less creative in problem solving ,less able to persevere at tasks,and less tolerant of unstructured time.快门式3d
H Nearly 40 years ago Gary A.Steiner of the University of Chicago collected fascinating individual accounts of families whose set had broken.In experiments ,families have volunteered or been paid to stop viewing ,typically for a week or a month.Some fought ,verbally and physically.In a review of these cold-turkey studies,Charles Winick of the City University of New York concluded:' The first three or four days for most persons were the
worst ,even in many homes where viewing was minimal and where there were other ongoing activites.In over half of all the households,during these few days of loss,the regular routines were disrupted ,family members had difficulties in dealing with the newly available time,anxiety and adaption By the second week,a move toward adaption to the situation was common.' Unforunately,researchers have yet to flesh out of these anecdotes:no one has systematically gathered statistics on the prevalence of these withdrawal symptoms.
豫公网安备41160202000603
站长QQ:729038198
关于我们
投诉建议