Argue53 smile 第一次作业

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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 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 conclusion of the argument seems relatively sound for the reasons, such as the conceived time the research results, given by the authors. However, there might be other explanations or links caused the infancy and continue life of people's shyness that should be considered before we make a comprehensive understanding.

First of all, the experiment result is incredible since the research group only contains 25 babies. Usually if an experiment want to demonstrate some presumption, it needs include a large amount of subjects which can be considered to standby the ordinary people. Maybe this 25 babies just were born at the same periods accidentally. We still do not know the reactions of other babies who were not born in early autumn.  Also, the place that these babies were living in is unclear. If they were born in the same place, they cannot represent all the babies. If the babies lived in different latitude, the time of sunshine might be totally different, which means the there is no comparability among them. The author also does not mention tests on other aspects than melaonin. It is possible that these 25 babies were not influenced by melaonin. The author just failed to present all the reasons that might cause the mild distress of the babies.

Secondly, it is also unpersuasive that the melatonin is the reason to cause the shyness in later life. As teenagers, most of them may present shyness in special occasions. Even these 25 teenagers shy are more often, it might be caused by other reasons such as they seldom experience some occasions than their peers. And we do not know other teenagers’ respond so it is improper to make such an comparison and conclude that these teenagers feel shy more often than other ones.

Last but not the least, the author mixed the terminology of “later life” here. Teenager is just one of the baby’s later life, middle age and even elder period can also belong to the later life. Even the babies and the teenagers might be affected by the increase melaonin of their mothers before they were born, there is no evident to prove that the situation will continually last. Maybe after the babies become adult, they will not be shy because they already gain enough experience to cope with problems.

Before the author make a convinced conclusion on the relationship between shyness of people and the level of melaonin of their mother when they were pregnant or what cause the shyness, the author still needs to gain more information about the babies who are tested, increase the number of test subjects and the length of test time and add more tests on other aspects of the subjects.