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".
清单通常是被用来评估人们记忆的工具。单词表就是用以测试记忆和回想条目能力的典型工具，它可以被设计并适合于分析人类记忆能力的多样性。这类研究所发现的事实之一就是“首因效应”，也就是说，由于注意力的工作方式以及记忆形成的需要，人们更容易记住摆在他们面前的第一样事物。所以，当你试图告诉别人本文中的清单时，你最后可以说，“清单上的第一件事是，你更容易记住清单上的第一件事。”

2. The human brain may automatically structure information in list form (although it may not)
二、人类大脑可能会自动将信息以清单形式加以组织（也可能不是这样）

Much research has been conducted into how humans store and structure their knowledge and thoughts. Collins and Quillan in 1969 proposed theirHierarchical Network model, where concepts and categories are stored at a certain level in the brain/mind and the properties of these are listed "below" (metaphorically). However, this view has met with some criticism, mainly based on how human memory or knowledge is rarely shown to be so rigidly organised. Still, it shows how fundamental lists may be.
许多研究都意在揭示人类是如何存储和组织其知识和想法的。柯林斯和奎利安在1969年提出了他们的层级网络模型，根据这个模型，概念和范畴储存在大脑/观念中的特定层面上，而它们的具体内容则列在下面（比喻说法）。然而，这一观点受到了一些批评，其理由主要是人类的记忆或知识很少表明是如此严格的被组织起来的。但是，这还是表明了清单可能有多么重要。

3. Lists take advantage of a limited attention span
三、清单利用了有限的注意力持续时间

There is an increasingly common view that internet use shortens a person's attention span. While a lot of this is Greenfield-esque paranoia about new technology, evidence suggests our visual attention is attracted to novelty, and on the internet novelty is always only a click away. There is data to suggest that this is how internet use works, and much of the web is dedicated to exploiting this. Rather than paragraphs of narrative, pushing the limits of a typical attention span, lists offer novelty every few lines, and thus are more likely to avoid the dreaded TL:DR response.
一个日益普遍的看法是，互联网的使用缩短了人们的注意力持续时间。当网络用户中的很多人展现出格林菲尔德式的对新技术的狂热时，有证据表明我们的视觉注意力会被新奇事物所吸引，而在互联网上，新鲜玩意总是随着鼠标点击一闪而过。有数据显示网络使用是如何工作的，而许多网站都致力于利用这一点。不同于挑战典型的注意力持续时间的大段的叙述，清单用寥寥数行展示新奇事物，因此它能更加容易的避免令人担忧的“太长而不愿读”的用户反应。

4. You probably won't remember all the things on a typical list
四、你可能不会记得一份典型清单上的所有东西

A lot of lists are lists of 10, or some multiple thereof, given that the majority of humans have grown up using the decimal system. However, short-term memory, or "working memory" as it's known to psychologists, has an average capacity of 7 (+/-2). This means you can hold an average of 7 "things" in your short term memory. These can be letters, words, or even sentences, as long as they count as one "thing". This is the limit of your short term memory. These things can be transferred to the long term memory if you rehearse or encounter them enough, but this means that if you try to remember everything on this list to tell someone about later, you'll be unable to recall 3 items on average. This bit might be one of them, which would be ironic.
许多清单都列出十项事情，或是十的倍数，因为大多数人类已经进化到使用十进制。然而，如心理学家所知，短时记忆或“工作记忆”的平均存储能力是7（+/-2）。这就意味着，在短时记忆中，你可以平均记住七项“东西”。它们可能是字母、单词、甚至是句子，只要能算作是一样“东西”。这是你短时记忆的极限。如果你重述或看到它们的次数足够多，这些东西就可以转化成长期记忆，但是这意味着，如果你试图记住本文列出的所有东西以便转述给别人，平均算起来，有三样东西你可能想不起来。这一段可能就是其中之一，真是有够讽刺的。

5. People are very good at grouping random things together, so lists can be about anything
五、人们非常擅长把随机事物组合在一起，所以任何东西都可以登上清单

Probability theories of category formation demonstrate that we tend to lump very different things together in the same category, (e.g. Football and Chess have very few features in common, but both would be considered a type of game). This tendency to group things together despite their differences mean lists with a nominal subject matter can include things that wander off topic quite bizarrely, like a list of scientific facts about the human body including a discussion of atomic structure.
类别形成的概率理论表明，我们倾向于把不同的东西堆在同一个类别之下(例如足球和国际象棋鲜有相同特征，但是两者都可以看成是游戏类型)。无视不同而将东西组合在一起的倾向意味着，有着一个名义上主题的清单可能包括一些风马牛不相及的东西，比如关于人类身体的科学事实的清单里却包括了关于原子结构的讨论。