Describe the Successes and Limitations of Attempts to Teach Nonhuman

Question

Examlex · Accepted Answer

The Answer is The answer should include the following information: (1) Early attempts to teach apes spoken human language failed because their vocal tracks cannot accommodate the sounds used in human language; (2) Researchers have been successful at teaching chimpanzees and bonobos human language, using either American Sign Language (ASL) or geometric keyboard systems. Using ASL, the Gardners taught a female chimpanzee named Washoe approximately 160 words. Washoe could communicate in simple sentences. Using a geometric keyboard system, Savage-Rumbaugh and colleagues taught a male bonobo named Kanzi several hundred words and thousands of word combinations; (3) Language acquisition in apes is similar to language acquisition to humans in a number of ways. First, there appears to be a critical period in language development. Both Washoe and Kanzi were relatively young when they began to learn human language. Older chimpanzees have great difficulty learning human language. Second, apes can transmit language to other members of their species. For example, a young chimpanzee named Loulis learned the meaning of 68 signs simply by watching Washoe. Third, apes can combine words to form meaningful novel word combinations. Fourth, the passive mastery of language is greater than active mastery in both apes and humans. Apes can grasp the meaning of grammatically complex sentences that they, themselves, could not generate; (4) There also are a number of important differences between the language acquisition of apes and humans. For example, the size of the vocabulary that apes can acquire is much less than humans. Kanzi had a vocabulary of hundreds of words; the average 4-year-old has a vocabulary of 10,000 words. Apes can master names for concrete objects and simple actions. They cannot map a word to an abstract term such as "justice." The complexity of the grammar that apes can use is considerably simpler than that of human children. The sentence constructions of apes rarely exceed three or four words, and when they do, these sentences are rarely grammatically correct.

Describe the Successes and Limitations of Attempts to Teach Nonhuman

Definitions: