Using the points from the lecture, explain why researchers think that babies may feel empathy.

Speaking topics in text

Using the points from the lecture, explain why researchers think that babies may feel empathy.

1. OK, we generally assume that babies can feel only very basic emotions like happiness or anger, that is that babies just react to things that happen directly to them.
2. However, some new research is suggesting that babies may be able to feel concern for others, to have empathy for others.
3. Now empathy is a complex emotion.
4. It involves a baby relating to someone else's emotions, not just reacting to things happening directly to them.
5. Let's talk about an experiment that may show that babies could be capable of feeling empathy.
6. OK, for the first part of the experiment, well, um, we've always known that babies start to cry when they hear other babies crying, right?
7. One baby in the room starts crying and all the rest join in.
8. We've always assumed that the other babies cried because they were reacting to the noise of the crying, that the noise itself was distressing.
9. So in the experiment researchers played a tape recording, a tape of babies crying, to another baby.
10. And sure enough the baby started crying when he heard the sound of other babies crying.
11. This was no surprise of course.
12. And researchers assumed that the baby cried because of the noise.
13. But the next part of the experiment was surprising.
14. The researchers played the baby a tape of his own crying.
15. Now it was just as noisy so the researchers expected him to cry.
16. However this time the baby did not cry.
17. He wasn't upset by the sound of his own crying.
18. Why not?
19. Well, maybe it wasn't the noise that had made him cry before when he heard other babies crying.
20. In fact, maybe noise had nothing to do with it.
21. It could be that the baby felt empathy for the other babies.
22. And that was why he got upset when he heard them crying.
23. The researchers concluded that it is indeed possible that babies feel empathy, concern for others.

Speaking recording
Votes
Average: 8.3 (1 vote)
Speaking category

Comments

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 710.0 578.828451883 123% => OK
No of words: 172.0 151.265690377 114% => OK
Chars per words: 4.12790697674 3.82278263415 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.62144681703 3.50058242952 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.25829999669 1.80425224433 125% => OK
Unique words: 102.0 92.4686192469 110% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.593023255814 0.61298525976 97% => OK
Syllable count: 223.2 182.283891213 122% => OK
Avg_syllables_per_word: 1.3 1.20543933054 108% => OK

Performance on coherence:
Topic speech coherence ratio: 0.0812360624403 0.0839705835288 97% => OK

Acoustic performance on paragraphs:
How many acoustic paragraphs: 2.0 4.47071129707 45% => OK
Average paragraph length: 86.0 65.8948926009 131% => OK
STD paragraph length: 4.0 19.7758100068 20% => OK
Average paragraph duration: 28.91 25.5208953607 113% => OK
STD paragraph duration: 0.14 7.49434385956 2% => The duration of acoustic paragraphs keeps same.

Acoustic performance on sentences:
How many acoustic sentences: 35.0 42.9832635983 81% => OK
Average acoustic sentence length: 4.91428571429 3.78147595546 130% => OK
STD acoustic sentence length: 4.83659519303 2.94285465224 164% => OK
Average acoustic sentences duration: 1.55171428571 1.39386743896 111% => OK
STD acoustic sentences duration: 1.37242535205 0.967747756167 142% => OK

Acoustic performance on acoustic silence:(An acoustic silence means a little pause between two or more words)
How many acoustic silence: 40.0 40.4456066946 99% => OK
Total acoustic silence duration: 8.04 7.59280334728 106% => OK
Average acoustic silence duration: 0.201 0.19053887516 105% => OK
STD acoustic silence duration: 0.150296373875 0.157467062838 95% => OK

Acoustic performance on acoustic words:
Total word duration: 45.46 46.3453556485 98% => OK
Average word duration: 0.264302325581 0.308780311121 86% => OK
STD word duration: 0.149480034427 0.201157623399 74% => OK

Disfluencies: like hesitations, or 'ehn' or taking a long time to pronounce a word:
How many disfluencies: 4.0 8.09623430962 49% => OK
Total_disfluencies_duration: 2.86 6.56692468619 44% => OK
Total acoustic noise duration: 2.14 3.53066945607 61% => OK

Acoustic rates:
Total speech duration: 57.82 59.5455230126 97% => Talk more. Do not save time. People can talk 4-5 words in one second.
Compare to expected duration: 0.963666666667 0.992425383543 97% => OK
Rate of silence: 0.691802144587 0.681803438845 101% => OK
Rate of speech: 2.97474922172 2.53813033465 117% => OK
Rate of speech by unique words: 1.7640954687 1.55221717717 114% => OK
Rate of word duration by unique words: 2.24373075231 1.99939622689 112% => OK
Average articulation rates: 0.41066772093 0.309613076454 133% => OK

---------------------
It may have duplicated content. Need to use the words more efficiently.

Rates: 83.3333333333 out of 100
Scores by speech e-grader: 25.0 Out of 30
---------------------
Note: the speech e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas.