Washoe

A very intensive attempt to teach a chimpanzee to talk was made some years ago by a married couplet both scientists.K.J and cathy Hayes.They adopted a baby chimp called Viki, And brought her up in their house exactly as if she were a human child, but using in addition the most sophisticated methods of teaching available.The result was disappointing .After six years ingenuity, Viki had learnd to utter only four sounds resembling English words. Form this and other studies, it looked as if chimpanzees cannot be tought a human language .
So matters stood until June1966 , when another scientist couple,R.A and Beatrice T.Gardner, began work at the University of Nevada with a female chimpanzee between eight and fourteen months old,Whome they named Washoe after the country where he University is situated. Benefiting from the Hayes’experience , the Gardner had had an imaginative new idea. We have seen that most monkeys rely more on visual than on vocal signals.Even the actual vocal apparatus of chimpanzees is very different from man’s .So instead of trying to teach spoken English, The Gardners desided to teach Washo American sign Language, as used by the deaf in North America,in which English words or concepts are represented by sign made with the hands; some of these symbols are representational , others are arbitrary , and all can be combined according to principles of English grammar and syntax. The Gardners and their colleagues brought up Washoe in shifts so that she never lacked for affectionate human company.they played all sorts of games with her and seem to have given her a very good time . All the time they were chattering among themselves in sign language , for it is known that simply being exposed to adults talking helps human children to learn to talk. They encouraged washoe to imitate them, prompted her to get a sign right by repeating it themselves or by placing her hands in the right position, introduced plenty of toys and other objects to increase her vocabulary,encouraged her to ‘ babble’ with her hands as a child does with his voice,and rewarded her for correct usage by tickling her, which she greatly enjoyed.
The results of all this were as follows.After twenty-two months of teaching . Washoe could use thirty – four words correctly in the appropriate circumstances.(she was only couned as knowing a word if three observes independently saw her use it correctly and without prompting.)
Whenever Washoe learned a new word,she very soon and quite spontaneously transferred it from a particular objects, such as the key of a cupboard,to attention to objects,such as all keys.she would spontaneously call the human’s attentionby making the correct signs.she used the sign for ‘dog’ when she saw a picture of a dog or even heard a dog barkwithout seeing it;evidently,like the dolphins,she had the capacity,previously supposed to be unique to man,of transposing patterns from one sense to another.
All this is remarkable,but Washoe did more.Without any prompting and apparently quite spontaneousl,as soon as she had about ten signs in her repertoire,Washoe began to invent combinations of signs and use them in a perfectly appropriate way.Among combinations which she invented are: open food drink ,for opening the refrigerator; go sweet for being carried to a raspberry bush; open flower ,to be let through the gate to a flower garden.Just before the Gardners published their first results (inAgust 1969), Washoe had learned the pronouns I-me and you, so that combinations that resemble short sentences have begun to ‘appear’. It only remains to add that Washoe’s learning was accelerating-she had learned 4 signs in the first seven months,9 in the next,and 21 in the last seven months.
Since Washoe un mistakeably combins and recombins signs to describe objects and situations new to her in perfectly appropriate ways,this wonderfull experiment seems to have established beyond doubt that a chimpanzee is capable of learning true language.
Sheer numerical differences of this kind may be important for the potentialities of human language . But the Gardners’ achievement remains epoch-making.An animal has been taught to use true language, to communicate with human teachers.

From ‘language andAnimal Signals’by Claire and W.R.S Russell

*chimpanzee شامپانزه
*intensive متمرکز،مشتاقانه
*vocal صدا
*sophisticatedغیرطبیعی
*ingenuityهوش، قوه ابتکار
*representational نمایشی
*evidently ظاهرا
*potentialities بالقوه
*spontaneously بی اختیار ، فوری
*combins ترکیب
*circumstances موقعیت ، شرایط

با آرزوی سلامتی و شادکامی
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