PSYCH 450 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Roger Fouts, Hominidae, Samuel Pepys
04/24/18 lecture 23: Language learning by the great apes
• Descartes thought that language was exclusive to humans
• Pepys of the same time thought that apes could understand English
• Neural requirements for language
o Minimal brain size larger than 500 cc?
▪ Chimp brain is about 500 cc
▪ Smallest human brain able to communicate is 500cc
o Is brain laterality essential?
▪ Chimps have laterality
▪ Have Broca and Wernicke regions
• 60-70% of chimps are right handed
o Left handed, and larger precentral gyrus in right hemisphere
• Larynx dropped lower in humans
o Why we are able to enunciate and have a range of sounds
o Children’s larn drop lower when the start talking
o When it is higher you can suckle and breathe at the same time
• Extended period of postnatal maturation during period of language acquisition
o Human brain 24% of adult size at birth
o Monkey and chimp brain 60% of adult size
• Human brain
o 87% of energy at birth
o 64% of energy at 2 years
o 44% of energy at 5 years
o 25% of energy in adults
• Gua And David
o Raised chimp with their own son and treated them the same
o W. and L. Kellogg (1933)
o Chimp did NOT learn to speak
• Keith and Kathy Hayes raised Vicki during the 1940s in their home
o Attempts at verbal language were a failure
▪ Only four words: cup, up, mama, papa
• Yerkes thought that chimps could maybe learn sign language
• Washoe (first signing chimpanzee)
o Allen and Beatrice Gardner
o 132-151 gestures over 4 year period
o Referents (come, give me)
o Some 2-3 sign sequences (go chase)
▪ Can’t reall do sentences
o Made up signs herself (water-bird for swan; drink-fruit for watermelon; cry-hurt-
food for radish)
• Roger Fouts (from 1970 until 2007)
o Worked with Washoe until she died in 2007
o Washington State Univ chimp facility then closes in 2013
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