绳子平接:老由心生

EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it: New study finds 70-year-olds have worse memory than 20-year-olds! 

        号外！号外！快来看快来瞧：最新研究发现70岁的人比20岁的人记性差！

No, I'm not trying to invoke the wrath of social science skeptics and budget-slashing politicians everywhere. Yes, I realize this reads like a potential case study in how researchers waste time and money exploring the obvious. But the next time critics try to tell you that psychology is merely the commonsense study of that which we already know, tell them to look more closely. 

     且慢，我可不是打算惹毛全体社会学怀疑论者与猛砍预算的政客们。没错，我明白这条标题长得很像一则关于研究人员是如何把时间金钱浪费在「明知故探」上的案例分析。不过，如果下次批评家们再跟你说什么心理学无非是些妇孺皆知的常识性研究，你大可对他们说：了解一下先。

Indeed, the headline above tells only part of the story of a new study just published by two researchers in my own department at Tufts University,Ayanna Thomas and Stacey Dubois. They found that a sample of older adults (average age: 70) performed significantly worse on a memory task than a sample of college students (average age: 19). Hardly a prediction that requires knowledge of research design much less an advanced degree, right? 

        实际上，上述头条只片面描述了一项新的研究报告，该报告由两位塔夫斯大学与我同系的研究人员安亚娜·托马斯（Ayanna Thomas）与斯泰西·杜波依斯（Stacey Dubois）发表。她们发现，在实验的记忆力测试中，一个由老年人（平均年龄：70）组成的样本群表现明显不如一个由大学生（平均年龄：19）组成的样本群。这……几乎连预测都谈不上，更不用具备高学历的研究设计知识，是吧？

But the fascinating -- not to mention practically important -- conclusion offered by this same study is that the expected age difference only emerged among half of the participants. What was special about the 50 percent of research respondents who didn't show an age difference? Were these particularly active or intelligent older adults? Had they been taking some sort of memory-enhancing herbal supplement? No and no -- they were no different in personal characteristics or past experiences than those who did show a decline in memory. 

        然而，该研究得出了一个有趣的——自不必说有多重要——结论：只有半数参试者体现出了预期中的年龄差异。那么另50%没显现年龄差异的参试者又有何特别之处呢？莫非这些老年人倍儿有活力倍儿有智慧？难道他们服用了某种增强记忆力的草药吗？非也，非也——与那些表现出记忆衰退的老年人比起来，他们的个人特征、过往经历毫无过人之处。

What was different were simply the circumstances under which the two groups of participants completed a memory test. 

        唯一有过的差别，仅仅是两组参试者在完成记忆力测试时所处的环境而已。

The task itself was the same for everyone: Both younger and older adults were given a series of word lists to evaluate, charged with rating how pleasant or unpleasant each word was. Each list included 15 words semantically related to a particular target concept that wasn't actually part of the list. 

        所有人做的测试都一样：青年人与老年人都要给一系列单词列表评分，根据对每个词的感觉，按照从愉快到不愉快的程度打分。比如一份列表可能会包括以下词条：线、缝纫、被扎、草垛*和注射，所有词都跟目标概念针有关联。但是针本身不在单词列表中。【*注：haystack，英文比喻「the needle in a haystack」，即「大海捞针」之意。】

So one list included items like thread, sewing, pricked, haystack, and injection, all words related to the target concept needle. But needle itself was NOT on the word list. After working through these lists, respondents passed a few minutes with a Sudoku puzzle filler task. Then, and only then, did the circumstances in which our two groups of participants found themselves diverge. 

        搞定这些列表后，参试者还要花上个几分钟填一份数独。之后——正是在此之后——两组参试者所处的环境开始不同。

At this point, one group of respondents -- let's call them Group A -- was informed that the study was actually about memory rather than their evaluations of the pleasantness of words. Group A (comprised of 50 percent older and 50 percent younger adults) was then asked to read a paragraph describing previous research findings regarding age-related declines in memory. 

        此时，一组参试者——就叫 A 组吧——被告知这次调查事实上是关于记忆力而非给单词的愉悦程度打分。接着A 组（由50%老年人与50%青年人构成）被要求看一段介绍，其中描述了此前的一些关于记忆力随年龄增长而衰退的研究发现。

With this in the way of introduction, participants were given a recognition test in which they had to look over a series of words to determine which ones they had seen in the earlier lists and which they had not. How did the older and younger adults in Group A do on this test? As you'd expect, the memory of older adults was less accurate. Specifically, they were more likely than their younger counterparts to incorrectly remember that the merely alluded-to target words, likeneedle, had been part of the original word lists. 

        受过这种介绍形式的影响之后，参试者们接受了一项认知测试，其间他们需要浏览一系列单词，判断哪些是他们先前见过的而哪些没见过。A 组的老年人与青年人们在这次测试中表现如何？如你所料，老年人们的记忆没那么准确了。更确切的说，他们跟青年的「试友」们相比更容易把目标单词——例如针——错记成原列表的一部分。

But this age effect disappeared in Group B. These respondents -- again, 50 percent older and 50 percent younger adults -- read through and evaluated the very same word lists. They, too, were given a Sudoku puzzle for 5 minutes. But they were then given a very different context for the memory test that followed: They weren't told that it was a memory test. 

        但是这种年龄效应却不见于 B 组。这组参试者——同样，50%老年人加50%青年人——看了、评了一模一样的单词列表。同样，他们解了5分钟的数独。但是，在随后的测试里，他们被置于截然不同的情境中：没人告诉他们这是一次记忆测试。

Instead, Group B was instructed that the study was about language processing and verbal ability (and, accordingly, they were given a paragraph to read about previous research related to language). When then asked to complete the same recognition test as Group A did, the memories of the older and younger participants were now indistinguishable. In other words, armed with a different mindset -- one focused on a domain in which negative stereotypes regarding older adults are not pervasive -- older participants in Group B showed no sign of the increased false positive rate observed in Group A.

        取而代之的是，B 组被告知这次实验是关于语言处理与言语能力（并且，相应地，他们得以看到一段对于此前的与语言相关的研究介绍）。然后，在按要求完成与 A 组相同的认知测试时，老年与青年参试者们的记忆力这回则不相上下。换言之，B 组的老年参试者们凭借着迥异的心态——由于在他们所关注的领域中，那些关于老年人的负面刻板印象并不普遍——完全没有表现出在 A 组中所见的那种增高的假正率。

Context matters. How a situation is framed... our expectations of what's to follow... these are anything but trivial considerations in predicting how we will think, feel or behave.

        情境至关重要。情形的构成如何……我们应当把期望放在何处……这些考虑因素在预测人们的思考、感知或行动方式时，绝非琐碎之事。

OK, so the moral of this memory study is hardly as dramatic as aging is all in your head. But the data do make a compelling case that what goes on in your head shapes how aging will impact you. Our stereotypes about what it means to grow old contribute to our actual experiences of growing old. 

        好吧，本记忆研究的核心思想的确不如「老由心生」那么吸引眼球。不过，数据说话铁证如山：「老」的程度取决于你的心态。对于变老，是我们的刻板印象人为加深了这一过程的实际体验感受。

And more generally, this study also reminds us, once again, that we don't know everything there is to know about human nature. That many of the so-called truisms we assume about how the mind works are only half-right (or, in some cases, even less so). That searching for illuminating research conclusions in psychology is far easier than finding a needle in a haystack, even when the needle's not just an insinuated figment of someone else's false memory.

        而且，更宽泛地说，这一研究也又一次提醒了我们，对于人性，我们仍然知之尚少。在那些我们自以为是所谓众所周知的事情中，大多都只半对半错（或许部分情况下，连半对都不算）。然而，在心理学中探寻具有启发性的研究结论，远比大海捞针来的容易，即便要捞的不是那根映射在人家错误记忆里的虚构的针。