十个惊人的科学事实:我们为何热爱清单_BEC初级作文

十个惊人的科学事实:我们为何热爱清单

People like lists of things. They're everywhere on the internet. You name any subject matter you can think of, odds are there's a list about it. Nowhere is safe. Even here, on the Guardian Science section, one of the most popular articles in recent months is a list. But why are lists so popular? Well, here are 10 astonishing facts about lists that may help explain it.

一份典型的清单，它的样式对于这个博客的作者来说再熟悉不过了。人们喜欢把事情列在清单上。清单在互联网上无处不在。任何你能够想到的事情，可能都有与之相关的清单，无一例外。甚至是在《卫报》的科学版块，最近几个月最热门的的一篇文章也是一份清单（译文在此）。但是，清单为何如此流行？下面十项关于清单的惊人事实或许有助于解释这一现象。

1. People will tend to remember the first thing on a list

一、人们更容易记住清单上的第一件事

Lists are commonly used as tools for assessing people's memory. Word lists are a typical tool for testing someone's ability to remember and recall items, and can be designed and adapted to analyse a wide variety of human memory abilities. One of the things uncovered by this sort of research is the primacy effect, meaning people are more likely to remember the first thing they are presented with, due to the way attention works and the demands of memory formation. So when you try to tell someone about this list, you may end up saying "The first thing on the list was that you're more likely to remember the first thing on the list".