Argument53, 诚恳请求拍砖

monika_rhliUID: 2314050

过一个礼拜就要考试了，现在把练习的习作发上来，诚恳请求拍砖

Argument53: Thirteen years ago, researchers studied a group of 25 infants who showed signs of mild distress when exposed to unfamiliar stimuli such as an unusual odor or a tape recording of an unknown voice. They discovered that these infants were more likely than other infants to have been conceived in early autumn, a time when their mother’s production of melatonin -a hormone known to affect some brain functions-would naturally increase in response to decreased daylight. In a follow-up study conducted earlier this year, more than half of these children-now teenagers- who had shown signs of distress identified themselves as shy. Clearly, increased levels of melatonin before birth cause shyness during infancy and this shyness continues into later life.


The argument is well-organized, but not well-reasoned. The author claims that infants who born autumn in which melatonin is increasing incline to show shyness and this shyness would continue to their later life. To support the statement the author point out that researchers surveyed a group of 25 infants who showed signs of distress to stimulation, and then he also assumes that their mother may be pregnant in fall. In addition, the author cites that the recent year study show that half of these respondents show shyness. At first glance, the argument seems logical. Close scrutiny of the argument reveals that it accomplishes little toward supporting the author’s claim. In my point, this argument suffers from several logical flaws as discussed below.

Firstly, the surveys sampled only 25 infants and did not so randomly across the entire infants spectrum, the survey results are not reliable to evaluate this study generally. The number of the respondents in itself does not representative. It is highly possible that this responding to stimulation is only special case in these 25 infants. So without ruling out these causes the author cannot justifiably to draw the conclusion.

Secondly, even if the survey is statistically significant in number and representative of the overall infants, no evidence support that there is a causal-and-effect relationship between mothers’ increasing melatonin and infants’ inclining to show signs of shyness. As it mentioned in the argument that melatonin affect brain functions; however it does not indicate that it makes children shy. Furthermore, the author claims that infants prone to show shyness in response to increasing melatonin is unfounded, in that he omits other functions of the increasing melatonin, it is possible that it would make infants cleverer or more open and so on.

Finally, the author assumes without justification that the infants growing up in the same background conditions and this effect on infants remain the same at different time. Therefore the assumption is unfounded because things rarely remain the same over extend over periods of time. It is entirely possible that children in different place have different characters. Even if infants with different education train different person, common sense tell us that environment of the growth play a significant role in people’ disposition. Any of these scenarios, if true, would serve to undermine the claim that increased levels of melatonin cause coyness of infants.

Sum up, the assumption mentioned in the argument is unfounded. To make it more convincing the author should indicate statistically significant in number and representative in infants’ spectrum. In addition, close scrutiny evidence that increased melatonin has an effect on infants to be inclining to shy.