Nim Chimpsky

Nim Chimpsky (November 21, 1973 – March 10, 2000) was a chimpanzee who was the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition (codenamed 6.001) at Columbia University, led by Herbert S. Terrace. Chimpsky was given his name to mock Noam Chomsky a critic of animal research into language acquisition.

Project Nim

Project Nim was an attempt to replicate Project Washoe, in which it was claimed that the chimpanzee Washoe learned to understand and use American Sign Language. Terrace and his colleagues aimed to use more rigorous experimental techniques, and the intellectual discipline of the experimental analysis of behavior, so that the linguistic abilities of the apes could be put on a more secure footing.

Attention was particularly focused on Nim's ability to make different responses to different sequences of signs, and to emit different sequences in order to communicate different meanings. However, the results were not as impressive as had been reported from the Washoe project, and from another project with the gorilla Koko.

While Nim did learn 125 signs, the study concluded that he hadn't acquired anything the researchers were prepared to designate worthy of the name "language" although he had learned to repeat his trainers' signs in appropriate contexts. One of Terrace's colleagues, Laura-Ann Petitto, estimated that with more standard criteria the true vocabulary count would be closer to 25 than 125. Nim's longest recorded utterance was "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you."

Terrace and his colleagues concluded that the chimpanzee did not show any meaningful sequential behavior that rivaled human grammar. Nim's use of language was strictly pragmatic and used only as a means of obtaining an outcome, unlike a human child's, which can serve to generate or express meanings, thoughts or ideas. There was nothing Nim could be taught that could not equally well be taught to a pigeon using the principles of operant conditioning. The researchers therefore were to question claims made on behalf of Washoe, and to argue that the apparently impressive results may have resulted from a relatively informal experimental approach.

Terrace's skeptical approach to the claims that chimpanzees could learn and understand sign language led to heated disputes with Allen and Beatrice Gardner, who initiated the Washoe Project. The Gardners argued that Terrace's approach to training, and the use of many different assistants, did not harness the chimpanzee's full cognitive and linguistic resources. This makes some sense as it is a common opinion among professional educators that intellectual development does not blossom in an environment bereft of intimate emotional bonds and stability. The position is still not fully resolved, because the financial and other costs of carrying out language-training experiments with apes make replication studies difficult to mount. The definitions of both "language" and "imitation", and the question of how language-like Nim's performance was, will remain controversial.

Critics of primate linguistic studies include animal psychologist Thomas Sebeok who stated:

"In my opinion, the alleged language experiments with apes divide into three groups: one, outright fraud; two, self-deception; three, those conducted by Terrace. The largest class by far is the middle one." (Wade, 1980).

Sebeok also made pointed comparisons of Washoe with Clever Hans. Some evolutionary psychologists argue that the apparent impossibility of teaching language to animals is indicative that the ability to use language is an innately human development (Pinker & Bloom, 1990).

Roger Fouts from the Washoe Project refers to the Clever Hans example too. However he claims that Nim Project was poorly conducted, because it didn't have strong enough methodology background to avoid such comparisons and efficiently defend from them. He also shares Gardners' point of view, that process of acquiring language skills through the natural social interactions gives substantially better results than behavioural conditioning. His own experiments show that pure conditioning can lead to using language as a method to mainly get the rewards, instead of expected raising communication abilities. Fouts has later proved that a community of ASL-speaking chimpanzees (including Washoe herself) was spontaneously using this language as a part of their inner communication system. They have been even directly teaching it their children (Loulis) without human help or intervention to do so, which means that not only they can use the language, but also it began a significant part of their lives.

Retirement and death

After his owners were reportedly going to sell Nim to a research lab, public involvement funded Nim's retirement to a ranch in Texas, where he died at the age of 26 from a heart attack.

Quotations

Three-sign quotations

• Apple me eat
• Banana Nim eat
• Banana me eat
• Drink me Nim
• Eat Nim eat
• Eat Nim me
• Eat me Nim
• Eat me eat
• Finish hug Nim
• Give me eat
• Grape eat Nim
• Hug me Nim
• Me Nim eat
• Me more eat
• More eat Nim
• Nut Nim nut
• Play me Nim
• Tickle me Nim
• Tickle me eat
• Yogurt Nim eat

Four-sign quotations

• Banana Nim banana Nim
• Banana eat me Nim
• Banana me Nim me
• Banana me eat banana
• Drink Nim drink Nim
• Drink eat drink eat
• Drink eat me Nim
• Eat Nim eat Nim
• Eat drink eat drink
• Eat grape eat Nim
• Eat me Nim drink
• Grape eat Nim eat
• Grape eat me Nim
• Me Nim eat me
• Me eat drink more
• Me eat me eat
• Me gum me gum
• Nim eat Nim eat
• Play me Nim play
• Tickle me Nim play

Longest quotation

• Orange eat me orange orange me eat orange eat orange me me me me orange eat orange orange me eat eat orange me eat me

See also

• Ape language
• Generative grammar (Chomsky)
• Koko
• Kanzi
• Panzee and Panbanisha
• Washoe

External links

• Famous Monkeys Through History (also includes famous apes)
• Fund for Animals
• Who2
• 'Test' results
• Laura-Ann Petitto. Do Chimpanzees have Language: What do "Talking Apes" Tell Us?
• A Philosophical Critical Analysis of Recent Ape-Language Studies

References

• Seidenberg, M.S. and Pettito, L.A. (1979). Signing behavior in apes: A critical review. Cognition 7: 177-215.
• Terrace, H. S. (1979). Nim. New York: Knopf.
• Pinker, S., & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13, 707-784.
• Wade, N. (1980). Does man alone have language? Apes reply in riddles, and a horse says neigh. Science, 208, 1349-1351.