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It's time to go again to the A Moment of Science mailbag.
又到阅读《科学一刻》栏目来信的时间了。
A listener writes:
其中一位听众来信说：
Dear A Moment of Science,I've heard that owning a dog or cat can be a good way to deal with stress and ward offdepression.
亲爱的《科学一刻》栏目组，我听说养狗或养猫是对待压力和预防抑郁的好方法。
So I was wondering–is it interacting with actual pets that's beneficial, or would justlooking at pictures of cats and dogs work to curb stress?
所以我一直想知道，有益的是与真实的宠物互动吗？或是只是看看猫猫狗狗的图片就可以减少压力呢？
Actually owning a pet is different from merely looking at pictures of cute puppies and kittens,certainly.
实际上，拥有宠物当然有别于只是看看可爱小狗或猫咪的图片。
Stress relief has a lot to do with the companionship that real pets provide.
减压与真实宠物给我们的陪伴有很大关联。
But one study showed that watching videos of animals can help reduce stress.
但是，一项研究显示观看动物视频可以帮助人们减压。
And according tothe study by researchers in Japan, looking at pictures of cute animals does appear to help usfocus and concentrate.
而且根据日本学者的这项研究，看可爱动物的图片似乎可以帮助我们集中精神。
The researchers divided around 130 students into two groups andassigned each a task.
研究者们将130名左右的学生分成两组，每组分配一项任务。
One group played an Operation like game that involved removing small objects from a holewithout touching the sides.
其中一组进行一种操作类的游戏，在不接触孔洞侧面的条件下将小物件从洞中移出。
A second group was tasked with finding a number in a randomsequence.
另一组则是要求在随机序列中找到一个数字。
Within each group, participants were shown pictures either of puppies and kittens or of growncats and dogs.
在每一组里，研究者给参与者展示小狗小猫或是成年猫狗的照片。
A subset of participants in one of the groups was also shown pictures of appealingfoods.
而在其中一个实验组里的一小组参与者面前展示的是诱人食物的图片。
The participants that saw the puppies and kittens consistently performed better than theothers.
结果是，看到小狗小猫图片的参与者们一致表现得优于其他人。
As for why viewing these cute images resulted in improved performance, the study doesn't say.
至于为何观看这些可爱的图像能够得到更好的表现，这项研究并没有给出原因。
It seems reasonable to speculate, though, that feelings of happiness or warmth elicited by cutepictures helps relieve stress, thereby enabling the brain to focus and concentrate with greaterpower.
尽管如此，我们可以合理地猜测，由可爱的图片所激发的开心和温暖的感觉有助于舒缓压力，由此使得大脑以更高的效率集中精神。
