时间:2018-12-24 作者:英语课 分类:Scientific American(九)月


英语课

You’ve heard of waterboarding used as a means to get suspected terrorists to talk. Some people object to such methods on the grounds that they amount to torture. But in the journal Trends in Cognitive 1 Sciences, psychologist Shane O’Mara of Trinity College in Dublin raises another objection: torture's not likely to work.


Proponents 2 claim that waterboarding's effective because prisoners will tell the truth to make the interrogation stop. But O’Mara says that’s not supported by scientific evidence. Harsh interrogation doesn’t motivate prisoners to tell the truth. It motivates them to talk. Because while they’re talking they’re not being waterboarded. But that doesn’t mean that what they say is true.


What’s more, prolonged extreme stress impairs 3 memory retrieval. American Special Ops soldiers have been shown to have trouble recalling things they’d learned before being subjected to food- or sleep-deprivation as part of their training. That’s because stress hormones 4 can compromise brain activity, especially in regions involved in memory.


O’Mara notes that mildly stressful events actually facilitate recall. So simply capturing, moving and then questioning prisoners, he says, should be stressful enough to get the information flowing.


 



1 cognitive
adj.认知的,认识的,有感知的
  • As children grow older,their cognitive processes become sharper.孩子们越长越大,他们的认知过程变得更为敏锐。
  • The cognitive psychologist is like the tinker who wants to know how a clock works.认知心理学者倒很像一个需要通晓钟表如何运转的钟表修理匠。
2 proponents
n.(某事业、理论等的)支持者,拥护者( proponent的名词复数 )
  • Reviewing courts were among the most active proponents of hybrid rulemaking procedures. 复审法院是最积极的混合型规则制定程序的建议者。 来自英汉非文学 - 行政法
  • Proponents of such opinions were arrested as 'traitors. ' 提倡这种主张的人马上作为“卖国贼”逮捕起来。 来自辞典例句
3 impairs
v.损害,削弱( impair的第三人称单数 )
  • Smoking impairs our health. 吸烟会损害我们的健康。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • Almost anything that impairs liver function can cause hepatitis. 任何有损于肝功能的因素,几乎都会引起肝炎。 来自辞典例句
标签: SSS evidence
学英语单词
acetylglucosaminephosphotransferase
agroeconomy
air-intake efficiency
aircraft radio station certificate
alphaproteobacterium
alur setar (alor setar)
amatto
antipodeal
aromatic polyamide
arts and crafts therapy
as warm as toast
atahualpas
automatic centrifuge
Ban Tha Don
bilateral matching
blaggard
blow short
bombsite
boyart
cable terminal
Cache on a stick
Carus,Karl Gustav
castor beans
castration tetanus
chronotope
clean on board
cobaltous fluorosilicate
confessorial
constable
crataegus pyracantha pers.
crestfallenness
Dermentobe
discerpible
disproportionation reaction
dolichols
double exponential distribution
doubly chained technique
dust control unit
equianharmonic cubic
ethylisobutrazine
even Clifford algebra
exhumed mountains
exponential wire
fail-safes
ficano
fighting compartment
foraminiferous
Giohar
give sb the glad eye
gondwana land
government's telegram code
Gravenhurst
Gualan
head grunt
heavy wet
hello screen
hemiplasy
Herodotus Basin
horizontal boring and turning mill
interpass
interstitial vacancy defct
Kimali
knocked jown
kumujian A
Lφgstφr Bredning
manjuice
medulla of hair
meltid
molniya
nonheat-treatable
operating system/virtual storage
passivise
pay individual income tax
Piryugang
pleuropulmonary regions
Pro-Asyl
propulsion phase
public choice economics
public role
quarantine unit
ramembrance
ratchet brace bit
reciprocal responsibility
red poll cattle
regenerating medium
regenned
riptech
Sam Goldwyn
scrapper guide
set a time limit
std&a (startup test design and analysis)
stoponium
sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
threatening question
trachea retractor
try-out
water block
welding reheat cracking
western diamondbacks
wobblies
zooerythrine