Ape Language studies Flashcards
What did Gregory Bateson say?
“There is a general popular belief that in the evolution of [humans], language replaced the cruder [communicative] systems of the other animals. I believe this to be totally wrong.”
What he meant by this is that if language and other forms of communication (non-linguistic forms) were serving the same biological function then one or the other would have to decay because evolution doesn’t favour multiple complex systems.
Language and Communication
- Animals communicate without language, and so can humans.
- Language is a learned symbolic system with near infinite generative capacity.
There is a lot we can communicate without language
What are symbols?
Symbols are abitrary; they represent concepts or objects:
The word “Dog” does not sound like dog
The word “Dog” does not look like dog
The word “Big” is not bigger than the word “little”
What does grammar permit?
Grammar permits near-infinite expression:
a. Word order: A “guitar solo” is not the same thing as a “solo guitar”
b. Recursion: “the capacity to generate an infinite range of expressions from a finite set of elements” (Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2002, p. 1569).
i. Sound units (phonemes): n, a, t -> at, an, ant, tan, nanna; abt. 40 phonemes in English -> abt. 225,000 words
ii. Meaning units (morphemes): 225,000 words -> virtually infinite number of sentences
Early attempts to teach areas to speak
study- animal- word
Garner (1986)- Chimpanzee- “Feu” (fire?)
Witmer (1909)- Chimpanzee- “Mama”
Furness (1916)- Orangutan (Peter)- “Papa”, “Cup”
Hayes & Hayes (1961)- Chimpanzee (Viki)- “papa, “mama”, “cup”, “up”
Laidler (1980)- Orangutan (Cody)- “gruch” (chocolate), “duh” (milk, drinks), “put” (pick me up), “thuh” (brush), “duh” (fudge, food)
- Animals trained to say these words
- Compare human adult: 30,000-60,000 words
- Great apes don’t pick up speech very easily even considering years of trying to teach them to talk.
- took Viki the chimpanzee 3 years to learn 3 words. By the age of 6, her vocabulary expanded to 6 words whereas humans can speak hundreds of words by the time they’re 2 years old.
Apes and Sign Language
Robert M. Yerkes
(1876-1956)
Yerkes was aware of the failure to teach great apes to speak. He speculated back almost 100 years ago that the failure to develop speech is the absence of a tendency to imitate sounds.
“Perhaps the chief reason for the ape’s failure to develop speech is the absence of a tendency to imitate sounds. Seeing strongly stimulates to imitation; but hearing seems to have no such effect. I am inclined to conclude from the various evidences that the great apes have plenty to talk about, but no gift for the use of sounds to represent individual . . . feelings or ideas. Perhaps they can be taught to use their fingers, somewhat as does the deaf and dumb person, and thus helped to acquire a simple, nonvocal, ‘sign language’” (1925, p. 180, cited in
Wallman, 1994, p. 11).
No chimpanzee or gorilla ect is more closely related to monkeys than humans are.
Kellogg & Kellogg (1933)
The Ape and the Child
Compared the infant chimpanzee (Gua) to their son (Donald). Compared using the exact same techniques
Gua (7–16 mos.)
Comprehended 95 words & phrases
Donald (10–19 mos.)
Comprehended 107 words & phrases
They were very similar in terms of responses
Mrs Kellogg became concerned that her son was starting to copy the ape isn’t of the same way round. So, they stopped the experiment after about 8/9 months.
At their relative ages Gua picked up the comprehensions slightly earlier
Sign Language- trained Apes: Overview
Washoe (1965-2007)
Chimpanzee
R. Allen & Beatrix Gardner
Moja, Tatu, Dar, Louilis
(1972+)
Chimpanzees
Roger & Deborah Fouts
Nim Chimpsky (1973-2000)
Chimpanzee
Herb Terrace et al.
Koko, Micheal, Ndume
Gorillas
Penny Patterson
Chantek
Orangutan
H. Lyn Miles
Artificial Language- trained Apes: Overview
Lana, Sherman, Austin, Panzee
Chimpanzees
Duane Rumbaurgh, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
Sarah, Gussie, Elizabeth, Peony, Walnut
Chimpanzees
David Premack
Matata, Kanzi, panbanisha, Nyota
Bonobos
Sue Savage- Rumbaugh
Ai
Chimpanzee
Tetsuro Matsuzawa
Human Word Acquisition
- The graphs are showing the same sort of phenomenon in slightly different ways.
- Somewhere between a year and 2 years of age, children display a very rapid increase in their rate of word learning. Starts slow, becomes rapid.
- The ages is variable- ranges from 15 months to 22 months of age.
Age Symbol Acquisition- Washoe
Slower to acquire signs than humans are to acquire spoken words
- Learned 132 ASL signs in four years (humans, typically at least this many words within one year after first words).
- Acquired about 240 signs (human adult—20,000-100,000 words).
- Very strict criteria—must spontaneously produce a sign and then use it every day for 15 consecutive days.
- Famously used sign combination “water bird” to describe a swan.
Ape Symbol Acquisition- Nim
Slow, gradual increase up to about 125 words in Nims lexicon and this extends between nearly 4 years of training.
Ape Symbol Acquisition-Kanzi
Fairly positive- cumulative number of words meeting dual acquisition criterion
Cumulative number of words which drop below acquisition criterion after having met it
Cumulative number of unique non-imitated combinations
200 words produced
500 words comp.
Kanzi Comprehension
Savage-Rumbaugh et al. (1993)
This study compared Kanzi’s performance when he was 8 years old to the performance of a 2 year old human (named I).
* Under the double blind conditions, 38 sentences was administered 38 novel sentences and whether he go it correct or incorrect was labelled with an i or c.
* A second trial indicated how incorrect or correct
Ape Symbol Acquisition-Chantek
Looks steep until you look at the x axis where it took Chantek years to acquire about 137 signs.
