【☆09GRE作文冲刺组☆】09/02/23号作业argument

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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.

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As what the study shows, the teenagers are more likely to shy if they were born in Autumn when the melatonin would increase. So, the author concludes that it is the melatonin that caused the shyness of the teenagers during infancy and he or she also presume that this shyness continues into their later life. Actually, the author makes some logic fallacies that can be figured out bellow:

Initially, the study, which began the thirteen years ago, while just show it final research recently lack the warranted evidence to show the relationship between the melatonin and the shyness. First, the author just shows two researches about the study and cannot make other analogous researches which can answer the questions such as is there another group of infant who didn’t bear in Autumn? Is there another way of research to show the shyness caused only by the melatonin and not other factors involved in psychology and physic? Second, the author cannot further his conclusion that this shyness would continues into later time, since there is no research can account for the future phenomenon. Whether the shyness of the teenagers is natural born or not? Even if the shyness is caused by the melatonin, whether they have the cogent reasons to explain the fact that the continuation of the shyness or not? May be there is psychological therapy for those teenagers to restore themselves from the embarrassing situation.

Moreover, the quantity of the samples is limited and cannot be representative of other infants who born in Autumn. And the phenomenon that the infants who were distressed when exposed to unfamiliar situations has nothing to do with the fact that those infants were more likely to born in Autumn, since there may be other groups of infants who showed their distress when exposed to unfamiliar things while were not born in Autumn. And may be all the infants have the distressed feelings when they contact with the unfamiliars.


All in all, the argument lacks important and cogent articulation of his hasty conclusion, the study of the relationship between the melatonin and the shyness is unreasonable. Lastly, I suggest the author to provide more examples and evidences to show the full process of the researches.