【答案解析】The lecture talks about how maternal care affects the development of offspring and the speaker uses one experiment to illustrate the topic. A research conducted in Montreal studied two groups of mother rats. One group demonstrated more intense care for their rat pups, being more likely to lick and groom their young than the comparison group. When these young pups became adults, they were made to perform in some tests, for instance, looking for a hidden object in a labyrinth. The result is, those rats receiving more mother care appeared to be quicker learners and displayed more curiosity than their neglected counterparts. In short, with more mother care in childhood adult rats have more confidence to face reality. [听力原文] W: Maternal care does have a measurable neurological effect on the development of offspring -- it appears that it can make young rats much more intelligent, according to a study conducted by a group of Canadian researchers published in Nature Neuroscience. Researchers led by Professor Michael Meany at McGill University in Montreal studied two groups of mother rats in a cross-fostering study. The behavior of the mothers in one group was characterized by an intense level of caring for their offspring, including licking, grooming and other interaction involving physical contact. Mothers in a comparison group seemed generally uninterested in their young except when feeding the young. Both groups of young rats were made to be subjects of a variety of tests once they were adults. Their main task was to swim through a floating labyrinth five times a day to look for a submerged object. The "mama's boys", those receiving more mother care, learnt spatial relationships faster and exhibited higher levels of curiosity than their more neglected counterparts. The result suggests that, as adults, the offspring of a tender mother exhibit more flexibility and stronger desire to tackle tough situations.