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Washoe (chimpanzee)

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Washoe (c. September 1965[1] – October 30, 2007) was a chimpanzee who was the first non-human to learn to use a human language, that of American Sign Language. She also passed on some of her knowledge to her adopted son, Loulis.[2][3]

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As part of a research experiment on animal language acquisition, Washoe developed an ability to communicate with humans using ASL. She was named for Washoe County, Nevada, where she was raised and taught to use ASL. Washoe had lived at Central Washington University since 1980; on October 30, 2007, officials from the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute on the CWU campus announced that she had died at the age of 42.[2]

Project Washoe

In 1967, Allen and Beatrice Gardner established a project to teach Washoe ASL at the University of Nevada, Reno. At the time, previous attempts to teach chimpanzees to imitate vocal languages (the Gua and Vicki projects) had failed. The Gardners believed that these projects were flawed because chimps are physically unable to produce the voiced sounds required for spoken language. Their solution was to utilize the chimpanzee's ability to create diverse body gestures, which is how they communicate in the wild[4][5], by starting a language project based on American Sign Language.

ASL instruction and usage

To teach Washoe signs, the Gardners and their graduate students initially modeled their approach on feed forward theory, where behavior is shaped with continuous modeling and repetition. When Washoe would spontaneously make a gesture that in some way resembled an ASL sign, the scientists would shape the gesture by encouraging and rewarding variations of that gesture until it became a true ASL sign. For example, the sign for MORE is made by bringing one's hands together and touching the fingertips. In the context of tickling, Washoe would naturally bring her arms together to protect herself. Noticing the crude resemblance of this action to the sign for MORE, the Gardners would pull Washoe's arms apart and stop tickling. Washoe then tended to bring her arms together again, at which point the Gardens would reward her with more tickling. Over time, the Gardners required Washoe to be more precise with her arm and hand movements in order to elicit more tickling. Eventually, only the correct ASL would cause the Gardners to continue tickling. After Washoe learned to robustly construct the sign for MORE when being tickled, the Gardners introduced the sign in the context of a game of pulling Washoe around in a laundry basket. According to Roger Fouts, a graduate student of the Gardners, Washoe caught on quickly to the idea that the ASL sign for MORE could be used to get more of anything, including food, games, and books. In this way, the chimpanzee showed the ability to spontaneously generalize an abstract concept such as "MORE" to a variety of contexts in which training had not occurred.

After the first couple of years of the language project, the Gardners and Roger Fouts discovered that Washoe could pick up ASL gestures without operant conditioning methods by observing humans around her that were signing amongst themselves. For example, the scientists signed "Toothbrush" to each other while they brushed their teeth near her. At the time of observation, Washoe showed no signs of having learned the sign, but on a later occasion she reacted to the sight of a toothbrush by spontaneously producing the correct sign, thereby showing that she had in fact previously learned the ASL sign.

In addition to individual signs, Washoe displayed the ability to combine signs in novel and meaningful ways. For example, she referred to her toilet as DIRTY GOOD and the refrigerator as OPEN FOOD DRINK, even though the scientists around her always called them POTTY CHAIR and COLD BOX. Fouts has written that this type of linguistic modification is similar to tool modification of wild chimpanzees.

Confirmed ASL signs

It is reported that Washoe could reliably use about 250 signs[2]. For Washoe to be considered "reliable" on a sign, it had to be seen by 3 different observers in 3 separate spontaneous instances in the correct context and used appropriately. Following those observations, it had to be seen 15 days in a row to be added to her "reliable" sign list. These signs were then further tested using a double-blind vocabulary test. This test demonstrated "that the chimpanzee subjects could communicate information under conditions in which the only source of information available to a human observer was the signing of the chimpanzee;" 2) "that independent observers agreed with each other;" and 3) "that the chimpanzees used the signs to refer to natural language categories - that the sign DOG could refer to any dog, FLOWER to any flower, SHOE to any shoe."[6]

Other projects and controversy

A number of projects have sought to establish ASL or other forms of language in other chimpanzees and also in gorillas and bonobos, as well as in non-primate species such as dolphins and parrots.

In particular, the Nim Chimpsky project failed to replicate the results of Washoe with a chimpanzee in a more "classical" experimental setting -- a scientific laboratory, as opposed to Washoe's nurturing home environment -- leading to a controversy as to which approach was more appropriate (see the relevant article for more details). It should be noted, however, that these experiments, by placing the chimpanzees in a more "classical" setting, did not give as much affection and attention to Nim. It is believed that, with human children, affection and feelings of love during childhood play a significant role in cognitive development.

Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker believes that the argument that Washoe is the first non-human to acquire a human language is generally considered without scientific support (see Pinker, 1994).[2]

Primate researcher Jane Goodall, who has lived with chimpanzees for decades, noted the importance of Roger Fouts' book Next of Kin, an account of his work with Washoe:

Roger, through his ongoing conversations with Washoe and her extended family, has opened a window into the cognitive workings of a chimpanzee's mind that adds new dimension to our understanding,[7].

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Friends of Washoe - Washoe's biography
  2. ^ a b c d First chimp reported to learn sign language dies, retrieved 2007-11-01
  3. ^ Washoe, a Chimp of Many Words, Dies at 42
  4. ^ Goodall, Jane (September 1986). The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0674116498.
  5. ^ Goodall, Jane (April 1, 1996). My Life with the Chimpanzees (Revised ed.). Aladdin. ISBN 978-0671562717.
  6. ^ Gardner, R. A. & Gardner, B. T. (1984). A vocabulary test for chimpanzees. "Journal of Comparative Psychology", 98, pg. 381-404
  7. ^ "First chimp to be taught sign language dies". South China Morning Post. November 2, 2007.

References

  • Teaching Sign Language to Chimpanzees. Edited by R. Allen Gardner, Beatrix T. Gardner, Thomas E. Van Cantfort.
  • Next of Kin: what chimpanzees have taught me about who we are. written by Roger Fouts. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1997. ISBN 068814862X
  • The language instinct: How the mind creates language. Written by Steven Pinker. New York: W. Morrow.
  • The Dragons of Edens: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Written by Carl Sagan.
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