Reading 1/2:
Reading passage 1
Read the text carefully and choose the best answers.
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WHY ARE YOUNGER KIDS PARTICULARLY AFRAID OF SHOTS?
There's nothing particularly shocking about the fact that kids are afraid of needles. After all, says Anna Taddio, a pharmacy professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in pain management, needles are "pointy, sharp, and they hurt."But for most of human history, science has dismissed that pain. Up until the 1980s, the scientific consensus held that newborn babies don't perceive pain, and doctors routinely performed
surgeries on infants without anesthesia. It wasn't until 1987 that the New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing that, in fact, infant pain is real. In the years since, research
has yielded new insights showing that younger kids are particularly afraid of pain. In 2012. Taddio surveyed children and their parents to determine the prevalence of needle fears in kids. In the survey. 68 percent of kids ages six to eight and 65 percent of kids ages nine to 12 reported a fear of needles. That number dropped to 51 percent among 13- to 17-year-olds.That disparity is caused by several reasons, says Rebecca Pillai Riddell, a clinical psychologist at York University who researches children and pain. For one, younger children are still in the age of magical thinking. "What enables us to believe that Santa and the Tooth Fairy are real also leads us to think that monsters are real and allows us to imprint fears," she says, explaining that needle phobias tend to develop between ages five and ten because by that point, kids have figured out that they get poked every time they go to a doctor's office-but they don't yet understand that it's just a routine procedure that will keep them healthy and, more importantly, be over soon. "We don't have the rational abstract reasoning that tends to happen around 12,"
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she says.Studies of children's brains have shown that their frontal lobes, which control cognitive abilities like problem solving, memory, and emotional expression, undergo significant developmental changes as they approach puberty. Pillai Riddell says this cognitive development allows older children to reason and put vaccination in perspective as just a quick prick-not total agony.
Young kids also simply don't have as much exposure to needles and vaccinations as older children and adults. Much like checking under the bed reassures kids that no monsters are hiding
there. Pillai Riddell says that children learn there's nothing to fear about needles the more that they're exposed to them.But though many children may grow out of their fears as they move through adolescence and gain more experience with vaccinations, it's not a given. A bad experience with a needle can stick with a child into adulthood-and that can have serious implications. Taddio's 2012 survey, for example, showed that five percent of parents avoided or delayed immunization in one or more of their children due to the child's fear of needles. Those unaddressed needle fears may also help explain some of the vaccine hesitancy we see among adults today. Taddio says.Fortunately, she adds. "This is something we can solve."
1) What significant change in scientific consensus regarding infant pain perception was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1987?
Anesthesia is unnecessary for infants undergoing surgery
ABCD Infants genuinely feel pain
Pain perception in infants is inconclusive
Infants do not perceive pain
2) What term is used to describe the intense fears that young children may develop towards needles, often emerging between ages 5 and 10?
