LANGUAGE
Background
The position of the behaviorists
The position of the linguists
Language in chimps
Early attempts to teach a chimp language
Kelloggs raised a chimp with their own child
Washoe (Gardners)
Learned american sign language
Problems of in interpretation
Sarah (Premack)
Learned about arbitrary plastic symbols (about 130 words)
Sarah understands many of the basic structures of language
Yes/no questions
Negation
Class concepts (e.g., color, size)
Quantifiers (all, none, some)
Logical connectives (if then)
Metalinguistic structures (e.g., name of)
Wh-- interogatives (e.g., where, when)
Evidence the symbol causes her to "think" of the object it represents
Limitations
She does not use language in a productive fashion
She does not understand complex syntactic structures
Language in pygmy chimps (Savage-Rumbaugh)
Kanzi acquired basic language through observation
Uses language in a productive fashion
Not only to request things for himself but also to talk about others
Has also learned to recognize spoken words
Did so without explicit training
Language in the African Grey Parrot (Pepperberg)
Training paradigm
Relies on social modeling and intrinsic reward
Learned labels for about 40 objects
7 colors and 5 shapes
Can count from one to six
Limitations
Lacks syntax
Does not understand second-order relations
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