ARGUMENT 53

错失湛蓝UID: 2585937

53 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 mothers' 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 author assert that the increased level of melatonin before birth will lead to mild distress in children during the early years and the later life. To justify the statement the author proposed that firstly the infants show wild distress when exposed unfamiliar conditions. Secondly the infants were conceived in early autumn , at that time a sort of hormone among women always reach a high level in response to decreased daylight. Thirdly, when the group of children are teenagers, the signs of distress still observed conspicuously. As for myself, the starement rests on unsubstantiated assumptions,thus is logically flawed and impertinency.
Foremost it is not presented the children compose the group are collected radomized, which is a crucial issue in statistical principle. What if the 25 infants were collected in hospital, thus the kids ill with other diseases, which lead to distress rather than hormone, or the crowd are a tribe that they are sensetive to the dissturbance than other kids, which is inherneted, so the conclusion is nonsence. Without ruling out the possibility, the consequent conlusion is unbelivable.
Futhermore, the increase of melatonin is not a sure factor that lead to the distress in children. In the first place, distress is a mental reflection to the outside world
that not only caused by mental facoters, but also by numerous physical diseases, even other conditons will give rise to the illness. In the second place, even if the hormone increaed at that time, however we could not draw a couclusion that the hormone is the killer, for other hormone may be flunctuate in a person and they also bring about a negative effect to the young mothers, which induce the disease.
Therefore,we should excise a entire investigation among the hormones, rather than just focus on this unique hormone.
The last but not the least is the sign such as shyness, anxiety, is a nomal physical phenomena, which could happen at any individual, but there is a conspicuous boundary between it and genuine distress, thus even the child express that mood ,it is not a abnormal phenomenon that worthing focus. In order to obtain more believable information ,the author needs to prolong the observation and record details of how the children behave, furthermore,turn to doctors to diagnose whether the kid is ill or not.
In addition, the argument is in short of pecific stuff to justify its point,and the quantity of the sample is not enough to draw a sensible comparison. Besides the report was issued 3 years ago, how is it accuracy is unknown.
To sum up ,
since several possibilities could not be rule out, we could not agree with the author on the conclusion of melatonin has relation to distress. Unless more evidences be proviede, we could make further discussion.

错失湛蓝UID: 2585937

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