Nim Chimpsky

Nim Chimpsky (November 19, 1973 – March 10, 2000) was a chimpanzee who was the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition (codenamed 6.001) at Columbia University, led by Herbert S. Terrace.

The validity of the study is the subject of dispute, as Terrace argued that all ape-language studies, including Project Nim, were based on misinformation--from the chimps. Roger Fouts did a similar study known as Project Washoe, in which the chimpanzee was also raised like a human child. Washoe was given affection and participated in everyday social activity with her family. Her ability to communicate was not far more developed than Nim's. Nim lived 24 hrs a day with his human family from birth; Washoe had spent her first 10 months in a research lab prior to being moved to a language study. But both chimps could use sign language to make themselves understood.

Chimpsky was given his name as a pun on Noam Chomsky, a critic of animal research into language acquisition.

Project Nim

Project Nim was an attempt to go further than Project Washoe. Terrace and his colleagues aimed to use more rigorous experimental techniques, and the intellectual discipline of the experimental analysis of behavior, so that the linguistic abilities of the apes could be put on a more secure footing.

"Since 98.7% of the DNA in humans and chimps is identical, some scientists (but not Noam Chompsky!) believed that a chimp raised in a human family, and using ASL (American Sign Language), would shed light on the way language is acquired and used by humans. Project Nim, headed by behavioral psychologist Herbert Terrace at Columbia University, was conceived in the early 1970s as a challenge to Chomsky's thesis that only humans have language." [1]

Attention was particularly focused on Nim's ability to make different responses to different sequences of signs, and to emit different sequences in order to communicate different meanings. However, the results, according to Fouts, were not as impressive as had been reported from the Washoe project. Terrace, however, was sceptical of Project Washoe and, and according to the critics, went to great lengths to discredit it.

While Nim did learn 125 signs, Terrace concluded that he hadn't acquired anything the researchers were prepared to designate worthy of the name "language" (as defined by Noam Chomsky) although he had learned to repeat his trainers' signs in appropriate contexts. "For one thing, they say, there's no syntax -- a basic requirement of language. Without combining words and then being able to switch combinations to change meaning, goes the argument, what animals use is more like a code than a language."[2] One of Terrace's colleagues, Laura-Ann Petitto, estimated that with more standard criteria the true vocabulary count would be closer to 25 than 125. Nim's longest recorded utterance was "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." But other students who cared for Nim longer than Petitto had disagreed with her, and with the way that Terrace was conducting his experiment. Critics assert that Terrace used his analysis to destroy the movement of ape-language research. Terrace argued that none of the chimps were using language because they could not signs but could not form in a manner which constitute language.

The book, "Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp who would be human" (Bantam, 2008) make argument against Terrance's project. One critics stated that "Hess (the author) has written about animals and their advocates before ("Lost and Found: Dogs, Cats, and Everyday Heroes at a Country Animal Shelter.") She is clearly an animal lover, yet (with a few exceptions) she resists the temptation to demonize the humans in Nim's life."[3]

Terrace and his colleagues concluded that the chimpanzee did not show any meaningful sequential behavior that rivaled human grammar. Nim's use of language was strictly pragmatic and used only as a means of obtaining an outcome, unlike a human child's, which can serve to generate or express meanings, thoughts or ideas. There was nothing Nim could be taught that could not equally well be taught to a pigeon using the principles of operant conditioning. The researchers therefore were to question claims made on behalf of Washoe, and to argue that the apparently impressive results may have resulted from the Clever Hans effect and a relatively informal experimental approach.

Critics of primate linguistic studies also include animal psychologist Thomas Sebeok who stated:

"In my opinion, the alleged language experiments with apes divide into three groups: one, outright fraud; two, self-deception; three, those conducted by Terrace. The largest class by far is the middle one." (Wade, 1980).

Sebeok also made pointed comparisons of Washoe with Clever Hans. Some evolutionary psychologists argue that the apparent impossibility of teaching language to animals is indicative that the ability to use language is an innately human development (Pinker & Bloom, 1990).

Objections

Terrace's skeptical approach to the claims that chimpanzees could learn and understand sign language led to heated disputes with Allen and Beatrice Gardner, who initiated the Washoe Project. The Gardners argued that Terrace's approach to training, and the use of many different assistants, did not harness the chimpanzee's full cognitive and linguistic resources. This makes some sense as it is a common opinion among professional educators that intellectual development does not blossom in an environment bereft of intimate emotional bonds and stability. The example often cited is to imagine a human child raised in a laboratory with no strong bonds to any parental figures, being offered snacks as rewards for speaking -- it is highly unlikely, in such an environment, that a child would possess strong communication skills. This is exactly the type of environment that Nim was put to when the test had to be conducted but when he was raised, he was raised as if he was a human by a human family.

Roger Fouts from the Washoe Project also claims that Project Nim was poorly conducted, because it didn't have strong enough methodology background to avoid such comparisons and efficiently defend from them^{[clarification needed]}. He also shares the Gardners' point of view that the process of acquiring language skills through the natural social interactions gives substantially better results than behavioural conditioning. He argues, based on his own experiments, that pure conditioning can lead to using language as a method mainly to get rewards, rather than raising communication abilities. Fouts later reported that a community of ASL-speaking chimpanzees (including Washoe herself) was spontaneously using this language as a part of their inner communication system. They have even directly taught ASL signs to their children (Loulis) without human help or intervention. This means that not only can they use the language, but it has become a significant part of their lives.^[1]

The controversy is still not fully resolved, because the financial and other costs of carrying out language-training experiments with apes make replication studies difficult to mount. Moreover, Project Nim Chimpsky so discredited the whole endeavour that no funding has been provided since. The definitions of both "language" and "imitation", and the question of how language-like Nim's performance was, will remain controversial.

Retirement and death

After his owners were reportedly going to sell Nim to a research lab, public involvement funded Nim's retirement to the Black Beauty Ranch, operated by The Fund for Animals, the group led by Cleveland Amory, in Texas. Nim died at the age of 26 from a heart attack.

Quotations

Three-sign quotations

Apple me eat
Banana Nim eat
Banana me eat
Drink me Nim
Eat Nim eat
Eat Nim me
Eat me Nim
Eat me eat
Finish hug Nim
Give me eat
Grape eat Nim
Hug me Nim
Me Nim eat
Me more eat
More eat Nim
Nut Nim nut
Play me Nim
Tickle me Nim
Tickle me eat
Yogurt Nim eat

Four-sign quotations

Banana Nim banana Nim
Banana eat me Nim
Banana me Nim me
Banana me eat banana
Drink Nim drink Nim
Drink eat drink eat
Drink eat me Nim
Eat Nim eat Nim
Eat drink eat drink
Eat grape eat Nim
Eat me Nim drink
Grape eat Nim eat
Grape eat me Nim
Me Nim eat me
Me eat drink more
Me eat me eat
Me gum me gum
Nim eat Nim eat
Play me Nim play
Tickle me Nim play

Longest recorded quotation

H.S. Terrace, in his article "How Nim Chimpsky Changed My Mind," quotes Nim's longest sentence as the 16-word-long "give orange orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me me give give me you."

External links

Famous Monkeys Through History (also includes famous apes)
Fund for Animals
Who2
'Test' results
A Philosophical Critical Analysis of Recent Ape-Language Studies

References

^ Fouts, Roger. 1991. Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees

Seidenberg, M.S. and Pettito, L.A. (1979). Signing behavior in apes: A critical review. Cognition 7: 177-215.
Terrace, H. S. (1979). Nim. New York: Knopf.
Pinker, S., & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13, 707-784.
Wade, N. (1980). Does man alone have language? Apes reply in riddles, and a horse says neigh. Science, 208, 1349-1351.

[1] Fouts, Roger. 1991. Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees

[1]