New from Scientific American - The Hedonic Effect 是啥？科學人告訴你
Appetizers Can Psychologically Spoil
Your Appetite
Mediocre main dishes口味平庸的主菜 taste even worse when they follow delectable美味的 appetizers—an example of the so-called
"hedonic effect."享樂效應
Erika Beras reports
Lots of
things influence how your dinner may taste to you: how it’s presented on
a plate, how hungry you are and of course, your taste buds味蕾. But
researchers wanted to know if early courses—appetizers開胃菜—influence the taste
of a meal, and truly do whet
your appetite刺激食欲.
Researchers
had 64
volunteers eat one of two meals. The meals were the same—bruschetta普切塔(香料烤麵包加番茄香料小點) as an appetizer and an entrée主菜 of
pasta with garlic
and oil. The pasta that everyone got was prepared to be only so-so. But
some of the volunteers first got a bruschetta that was made to be mediocre普通的,
while the others got one that was stellar.好吃到爆的(原意是卓越、極佳的)
Then the
volunteers rated
the meals. And people who ate the good appetizer thought their entrée was even worse
than did people who had the middling中間的(平淡無奇的)
appetizer. The study is in the journal Food Quality
and Preference. [Jacob Lahne and Debra A. Zellner, The great is the enemy of the good: Hedonic contrast in a
coursed meal]
This work
builds on previous studies that have focused on the perception of food and
drink, and other sensory experience感官體驗.
In one investigation for example, researchers found that hearing a loud
sound first then makes a soft sound seem to sound even softer.
Researchers call this effect hedonic contrast享樂差異—the
perception or pleasure gained from something is affected by how it
compares to other similar stimuli刺激物(單數為stimulus).
Maybe keep that fact in mind—or on the tip of your tongue此句是雙關語。On the tip of one’s tongue原意是話到嘴邊一時想不起來。本文因為與味蕾和舌頭有關，所以意思是「舌尖要特別留意」—next time you plan your
courses.
看到教練那麼用心的整理，真的whet my appetite for studying harder!!
回覆刪除Hi Isaac,
回覆刪除感謝你捧場。教練這陣子好忙，批改學生作文佔去我所有醒著的時間了，所以部落格除了偶爾的NPR跟Scientific American之外，都只能拿舊的出來讓大家複習，感謝你不嫌棄。教練會儘量多寫些有趣的東西跟大家分享的。
希望下次教練可以分享如何增進口說的文章，除了上次的shadowing之外，也想知道如何突破"字字是英文，句句卻不是"的窘境!!
回覆刪除Hi Isaac,
回覆刪除未來一定會增加這些單元的，等我忙完這一輪(可怕的走馬燈人生)。
另外「字字是英文、句句卻不是」真是說得好傳神啊。如何真的突破閱讀跟聽力瓶頸，教練來好好想想該怎麼分享最好。當然最基本的做法，就是別再花很多時間背單字了。聽力要以句子為單位理解(而非單字)，很多片語啦或是特定的英語用法也要熟悉，才不會一直停留在「英文單字入腦後，翻譯成中文單字」這種聽力或是閱讀窘境。