The consensus on the results seems to be that they learned hundreds of words of ASL, but do not seem to be able to learn to combine them with any sort of grammar other than grouping situationally-related words close together in time. More a series of single-gesture associations and exclamations than sentences. Our language and communication faculties don’t have much of a counterpart in there.
As they matured they also appeared to become aggressive and uncontrollable. Though perhaps that has something to do with being fully physically mature by age 11 after entering puberty at age 7...
Nim wasn’t raised for very long in that environment, though—they transferred him to a laboratory at a young age and he was very undersocialized compared to Washoe.
I’m not sure to what degree you’d call Washoe aggressive and uncontrollable. I know a few people who met her (a journalist, a primatologist, a psychologist and sign language interpreter) and even interacted freely with her and all of them found her to be rather charming; all in circumstances where, while her surrogate parent was certainly present, he could hardly have stopped her if she’d decided to inflict harm or just felt threatened for some reason.
(Washoe is also said to have taught her son much of what she knew before her death—he was raised only by the sign-using chimps in that community, not humans, and the human handlers only ever used seven signs around him. Her vocabulary was also double-blind tested.)
Thanks for the more direct input—popular accounts no doubt follow a few scripts in their descriptions. I’d imagine socialization would make a huge impact indeed, and that a good deal of interpretation of ‘agression’ could come from the fact that its much more disconcerting to us to have a nonhuman making various displays than a human, possibly combined with faster maturation.
The teaching of sign language is interesting… have adult chimps taught each other sign language?
The teaching of sign language is interesting… have adult chimps taught each other sign language?
I’m not sure, but I know Kanzi, a Bonobo, is claimed to have picked it up from video of Koko the Gorilla (he was not ever trained to sign, but began quoting some of her signs verbatim. He normally communicates with lexigrams; it’s been discovered that he’s vocalizing, albeit at much too high a pitch but with approximate articulation, the English word he hears whenever he selects a lexigram. Chantek, an orangutan (who has had several outside observors interview him, and was raised-as-human basically full time like Washoe) has not taught his current, non-signing female roommate what he knows, and it has been attested that he seems to consider his use of sign something unique; he refers to himself as an “orangutan-person”, while roomie is just an “orangutan” and his handler is “person.”
(Randomly, I’m also reminded—though I can’t track down which ape this was at the moment, will poke it later—of an experiment with one well-socialized chimp who, faced with a “pictures of humans, pictures of chimps, here’s your picture, where does it go?” puzzle insistently placed his picture with the humans, and seemed rather upset to be corrected. This may’ve been Kanzi, so substitute bonobo in that case...)
It may be that a particularly intelligent bonobo can transcend the expected limitations of his species; consider, for example, Kanzi (whose wikipedia article I have just now come across—I have no idea how much of that is exaggeration).
Thanks for hunting down the links! The Nim story sounds really sad. =/
I kinda feel like that experiment was trying too hard to teach Nim to think like a human, rather than find out what/how Nim thinks. I’d be pretty impressed with combinations of words without grammar from other animals, considering that’s less than we currently have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_(chimpanzee) “Washoe was raised in an environment as close as possible to that of a human child, in an attempt to satisfy her psychological need for companionship.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_Chimpsky “Nim at 2 weeks old was raised by a family in a home environment by human surrogate parents”
The consensus on the results seems to be that they learned hundreds of words of ASL, but do not seem to be able to learn to combine them with any sort of grammar other than grouping situationally-related words close together in time. More a series of single-gesture associations and exclamations than sentences. Our language and communication faculties don’t have much of a counterpart in there.
As they matured they also appeared to become aggressive and uncontrollable. Though perhaps that has something to do with being fully physically mature by age 11 after entering puberty at age 7...
Nim wasn’t raised for very long in that environment, though—they transferred him to a laboratory at a young age and he was very undersocialized compared to Washoe.
I’m not sure to what degree you’d call Washoe aggressive and uncontrollable. I know a few people who met her (a journalist, a primatologist, a psychologist and sign language interpreter) and even interacted freely with her and all of them found her to be rather charming; all in circumstances where, while her surrogate parent was certainly present, he could hardly have stopped her if she’d decided to inflict harm or just felt threatened for some reason.
(Washoe is also said to have taught her son much of what she knew before her death—he was raised only by the sign-using chimps in that community, not humans, and the human handlers only ever used seven signs around him. Her vocabulary was also double-blind tested.)
Thanks for the more direct input—popular accounts no doubt follow a few scripts in their descriptions. I’d imagine socialization would make a huge impact indeed, and that a good deal of interpretation of ‘agression’ could come from the fact that its much more disconcerting to us to have a nonhuman making various displays than a human, possibly combined with faster maturation.
The teaching of sign language is interesting… have adult chimps taught each other sign language?
I’m not sure, but I know Kanzi, a Bonobo, is claimed to have picked it up from video of Koko the Gorilla (he was not ever trained to sign, but began quoting some of her signs verbatim. He normally communicates with lexigrams; it’s been discovered that he’s vocalizing, albeit at much too high a pitch but with approximate articulation, the English word he hears whenever he selects a lexigram. Chantek, an orangutan (who has had several outside observors interview him, and was raised-as-human basically full time like Washoe) has not taught his current, non-signing female roommate what he knows, and it has been attested that he seems to consider his use of sign something unique; he refers to himself as an “orangutan-person”, while roomie is just an “orangutan” and his handler is “person.”
(Randomly, I’m also reminded—though I can’t track down which ape this was at the moment, will poke it later—of an experiment with one well-socialized chimp who, faced with a “pictures of humans, pictures of chimps, here’s your picture, where does it go?” puzzle insistently placed his picture with the humans, and seemed rather upset to be corrected. This may’ve been Kanzi, so substitute bonobo in that case...)
I imagine that that chimp (or bonobo), if presented with a copy of Tarzan, and if able to read, would immediately identify with the hero.
It may be that a particularly intelligent bonobo can transcend the expected limitations of his species; consider, for example, Kanzi (whose wikipedia article I have just now come across—I have no idea how much of that is exaggeration).
Thanks for hunting down the links! The Nim story sounds really sad. =/
I kinda feel like that experiment was trying too hard to teach Nim to think like a human, rather than find out what/how Nim thinks. I’d be pretty impressed with combinations of words without grammar from other animals, considering that’s less than we currently have.