C
Bringing up children is hard work, and you are often to blame for any bad behavior of your children. If so, Judith Rich Hams has good news for you. Parents, she argues, have no important longterm effects on the development of the personality of their children. Far more important are their playground friends and neighborhood companions. Ms Harris takes to bits the assumption which has dominated (支配) developmental psychology for almost half a century.
Ms Harris' attack on the developmentalists “nurture” argument looks likely to reinforce (加强) doubts that the profession was already having. If parents matter, why is it that two adopted children, reared in the same home, are no more similar in personality than two adopted children reared in separate homes? Or that a pair of identical twins, reared in the same home, are no more alike than a pair of identical twins reared in different homes?
Difficult as it is to track the precise effects of parental upbringing, it may be harder to measure the exact influence of the peer (同龄人) group in childhood and adolescence. Ms Harris points to how children from immigrant homes soon learn not to speak at school in the way their parents speak. But acquiring a language is surely a skill, rather than a characteristic of the sort developmental psychologists hunt for. Certainly it is different from growing up tensely or relaxedly, or from learning to be honest or hard-working or generous. Easy though it may be to prove that parents have little impact on those qualities, it will be hard to prove that peers have vastly more.
Moreover, mum and dad surely cannot be ditched completely. Young adults may, as Ms Harris argues, be keen to appear like their contemporaries. But even in those early years, parents have the power to open doors: they may initially choose the peers with whom their young associate, and pick that influential neighborhood. Moreover, most people suspect that they come to resemble their parents more in middle age, and people's child-rearing habits may be formed partly by what their parents did. So the balance of influences is probably complicated, as most parents already suspected without being able to demonstrate it scientifically. Even if it turns out that the genes they pass on and the friends their children play with matter as much as affection, discipline and good example，parents are not completely off the hook.
【语篇解读】 “子不教，父之过”，这一传统的观点受到人们的挑战与质疑。
Ms Harris研究发现，子女性格的养成，更多地受到他们周围的朋友和邻居的影响。
44.According to Ms Harris，________.
A.parents are to blame for any bad behavior of their children
B.children's personality is shaped by their friends and neighbors
C.nature rather than upbringing has a significant effect on children's personality development
D.parents will greatly affect the children's life in the long run
解析 推理判断题。第一段说“孩子性格更多是受朋友和邻居的影响”。
答案 B
45.The word “ditched”(Line 1, Para.4)could best be replaced by________.
A.proved B.emphasized
C.compared D.ignored
解析 词义猜测题。第四段第一句意为，此外，父母的影响肯定不容忽视。
答案 D
46.The developmental psychologists think________.
A.children are more influenced by their peers
B.identical twins raised in the same home are different in personality
C.twins raised in two separate families are different in personality
D.upbringing has a less significant effect on children's personality development
解析 推理判断题。根据第二段可知，双胞胎在不同家庭成长，也就会有不同的性格。
答案 C
47.According to Paragraph 3, we know that________.
A.it is easier for children to gain a language at home
B.it is harder to follow the effects of parental upbringing
C.immigrant children avoid speaking the same way as their parents at school
D.it is proved that peers have a greater effect on children's qualities
解析 细节理解题。文章第三段说移民家庭里的孩子在学校不会像父母一样说话。
答案 C
