Argument53 【0706G－LOVEAW小组】第12次作业

小猫儿UID: 2297873

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.

12:14-12:54
1、  样本数量太小，研究不可靠
2、  婴儿的紧张是否因为melatonin的分泌增加
3、  羞涩延续问题与童年经历有关，未提及其童年经历

The research in the argument reveals that increased levels of melatonin before birth cause shyness during infancy and this shyness continues into later life. A close scrutiny will reveal the reasoning in the argument unconvincing as it stands.

In the first place, the survey throughout the argument has a vital fallacy which renders it impeachable. In the survey there are only twenty-five individuals put into experiment, which is too small a sample size to have any statistical meaning. It is possible that these children are from the same city and thus are not representative of all infants from different areas of the country. Maybe the pollution of the city has influenced the performance of the infants. Or it is also possible that the twenty-five infants are all from suburban areas, of which the medical environment is at a lower level, which leads to the abnormality of the infants. Thus, the size of the sample should be much bigger and the population should be representative by expanding the quantity of the infants investigated and the area they are from. Without such conditions, I can not accept the result of the survey.

In the second place, even if the survey is reliable, it is not sure that the cause of the mild distress of the infants is the excretion of melatonin. The arguer provides the fact that the infants who show mild distress are more likely to be conceived in early autumn, when melatonin is increased in their mothers. In other words, there are parts of the infants who are not conceived in early autumn thus the mothers do not provide more melatonin. How can the arguer explain the reason why they suffer from mild distress as well? It is possible that they have such performances because their mothers have the same kind of medicine while pregnant, which leads to the babies’ distress. It is also possible that they are all born in an abnormal method such as early birth, or caesarean birth, which can leave indelible impacts on the babies. Without ruling out these possibilities, the arguer can not arbitrarily draw the conclusion that the cause of the mild distress of these infants is exactly the excretion of melatonin of their mothers.

In addition, the shyness of these individuals in later life is supposed to be associated with the mild distress in their babyhood. As is known to all, how an individual performs in later life has much to do with the experiences in the childhood, which is avoided in the argument. If an infant does not obtain adequate caress in its babyhood, it gets much more bashful as it grows. If a child suffers from critics frequently in his childhood, the child would be more timorous than other children. Such conditions should be both taken into consideration. It is possible that the infants investigated in the survey are not shy congenitally. However, as they grow up, they are not given enough praise so that they become shy in later years. In such cases, it can not be concluded that the mild distress of the infants lead to their shyness in later lives.

To sum up, the arguer arbitrarily draws a conclusion on the basis of a series of leaky reasoning. More detailed information should be complemented to bolster the argument.