非典型中国式英语（上）

有一次，笔者何震给太太Linda加拿大的哥哥和嫂子写信。给人写信的结尾一般我用“Have an ice day”的套话，这次我想创新一下，与其祝愿别人一天好，不如祝别人一生都好，于是我在结尾时祝他们“Have a good life!”     

Mother–Infant Person‐ and Object‐Directed Interactions in Latino Immigrant Families: A Comparative Approach

Cultural variation in durations, relations, and contingencies of mother–infant person‐and object‐directed behaviors were examined for 121 nonmigrant Latino mother–infant dyads in South America, Latina immigrants from South America and their infants living in the United States, and European American mother–infant dyads. Nonmigrant Latina mothers and infants engaged in person‐directed behaviors longer than Latino immigrant or European American mothers and infants. Mother and infant person‐directed behaviors were positively related; mother and infant object‐related behaviors were related for some cultural groups but not others. Nearly all mother and infant behaviors were mutually contingent. Mothers were more responsive to infants' behaviors than infants were to mothers. Some cultural differences in responsiveness emerged. Immigrant status has a differentiated role in mother–infant interactions.     

What's in View for Toddlers? Using a Head Camera to Study Visual Experience

This article reports 2 experiments using a new method to study 18‐to 24‐month‐olds' visual experiences as they interact with objects. Experiment 1 presents evidence on the coupling of head and eye movements and thus the validity of the head camera view of the infant's visual field in the geometry of the task context. Experiment 2 demonstrates the use of this method in the naturalistic context of toy play with a parent. The results point to the embodied nature of toddlers' attentional strategies and to importance of hands and hand actions in their visual experience of objects. The head camera thus appears to be a promising method that, despite some limitations, will yield new insights about the ecology and content of young children's experiences.     

Speech Perception by 6‐to 8‐Month‐Olds in the Presence of Distracting Sounds

The role of selective attention in infant phonetic perception was examined using a distraction masker paradigm. We compared perception of /bu/ versus /gu/ in 6‐ to 8‐month‐olds using a visual fixation procedure. Infants were habituated to multiple natural productions of 1 syllable type and then presented 4 test trials (old‐new‐old‐new). Perception of the new syllable (indexed as novelty preference) was compared across 3 groups: habituated and tested on syllables in quiet (Group 1), habituated and tested on syllables mixed with a nonspeech signal (Group 2), and habituated with syllables mixed with a non‐speech signal and tested on syllables in quiet (Group 3). In Groups 2 and 3, each syllable was mixed with a segment spliced from a recording of bird and cricket songs. This nonspeech signal has no overlapping frequencies with the syllable; it is not expected to alter the sensory structure or perceptual coherence of the syllable. Perception was negatively affected by the presence of the auditory distracter during habituation; individual performance levels also varied more in these groups. The findings show that perceiving speech in the presence of irrelevant sounds poses a cognitive challenge for young infants. We conclude that selective attention is an important skill that supports speech perception in infants; the significance of this skill for language learning during infancy deserves investigation.     

跨文化交流:转换与结束的技巧

跨文化交往中转折话题时，我们要像开车转弯一样，事先打出左转或右转信号灯。很多老外感觉，一些华人交流时，转换话题太快、太突然了，有时没有一点信号和提示，使老外如坠云雾，搞不清楚对方到底要谈论些什么。转换话题太快，部分原因是由于中西方的思维和表达方式的不同，另外一部分则是个人性格和社交能力的差异。     

别让自己太廉价

别人付出了劳动，我们就要支付合理的报酬；我们付出了劳动，就要求别人支付合理的报酬。英语中有句谚语说得好：“Pay a penny，get a monkey!”（一分钱，一分货!）