Talk:Washoe (chimpanzee)

More than half of this article is arguments or cases against the reasearch done on Washoe. It has little to do with the actual Chimpanzee, and is not a good, unbiased wikipedia article. (preceding unsigned comment by User:63.100.44.98)

Washoe's main notability is due to the research done with her, so I doubt this can be separated. don't think the article is far from NPOV, though it could certainly do with more editing than I have just done. Martinp 04:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Death

Sadly, she died just recently. [1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.197.40.199 (talk) 19:45, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Language acquistion - dubious claims

"She was the first non-human to acquire a human language (American Sign Language)..."

Extremely misleading statement. She in no way acquired human language: she could use a small number of symbols (relative to a child who by this stage has probably around 14000 words) and most scientists agree that Washoe demonstrates at best very impoverished grammar. I have thus changed the sentence to:

She was the first non-human who demonstrated a modest ability to learn symbols (American Sign Language) and use them to communicate. Whilst some hailed this as the first instance of a non-human acquiring a human language, this conclusion is not scientifically robust. Neuropsychology 12:03, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree, this claim is very misleading and the whole article completely glosses over the vast opposition to the project's published "findings".

The project may be a valid study of the ape's communication capabilities, but to describe the stimulated/conditioned use of of a limited umber symbols with no human grammar bears no resemblance to what linguists regard as human language (as yet the only mode of language we have discovered). Unless someone can demonstrate grammar, abstraction and infinite innovation, then the best we have is a performing chimp. Please get a linguist to review this page.

http://www.uwm.edu/~wash/MIRROR2.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.199.163.30 (talk) 09:43, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Remember that ASL doesn't use the same grammar as spoken English. Alx xlA 17:32, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

So where is the evidence that Washoe has mastered any sort of grammar at all? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.199.163.30 (talk) 11:33, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I see the claim that Washoe learnt ASL and passed it on to her son has been re-introduced. What the available evidence shows is that she acquired a small vocabulary, which without human intervention she was in part able to pass on to her son (Fouts, Fouts, & Van Cantfort, 1989). There is disputed evidence that she was using a combinatorial vocabulary for the generation of new ideas (water-bird for duck for example). The reason for this is that this is open to experimenter bias, deliberate or not. For example, "bread foot" could well have been said and not recorded because it is not meaningful to the experimenter. So that's vocab. We can agree on a modest vocab and a less sizeable one being passed onto Loulis. I have amended the article.

As for grammar, I agree with the above comment about needing to show evidence of recursion etc. However, I do not consider myself significantly familiar with the material to comment on this. So, I have emailed some linguists and invited them to make comments on the page. Neuropsychology 00:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

"Washoe (c. September 1965[1] – October 30, 2007) was a chimpanzee who was the first non-human to learn a human language, that of American Sign Language. She also passed on her knowledge to her adopted son, Loulis".

It's getting annoying now that people keep switching this back to inaccurate claims. As I say above, there is evidence for her learning some ASL. This is very impressive for sure. However, to say she learnt a human language implies she has a strong command of it, like any adult human. This is not true. Her vocab was in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands like humans and you can see the points about grammar above. Second, to say "She also passed on her knowledge to her adopted son, Loulis" is inaccurate because she only passed on some of the signs. Again, impressive feat but let's state it accurately.

I am not on a mission here to quash the claims that some non-human animals arent able to learn some parts of human language. In line with what Wikipedia is for, I want to have an accurate article that does not mislead. To say she learnt a language and passed it does not achieve this. As I say earlier, what the availble evidence shows is that "we can agree on a modest vocab and a less sizeable one being passed onto Loulis". I have reinstated this into the article.

For those who keep changing it back, whatever reason you have for doing this it is not helpful to the accuracy of the article. If you wish to change it back again, please add some sort of supporting argument on this discussion board and let the evidence speak for itself. Neuropsychology (talk) 14:41, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Having read "Next of Kin", the book detailing Project Washoe, the claims that she acquired human language and grammar are not in debate among reputable scientists. She mastered only a few hundred signs, but ASL in itself has many fewer words than does the English language, due to facial expressions and body language being used to convey varying degrees of a word. The grammar debate; for one, the grammar is different than in English, and tests were done to show she had an idea of how to put words together, in logical word order (Subject-Verb-Object), even with sentences and words that had never been signed to her previously. Deaf persons who were fluent in sign even observed her and agreed most of the time on what she was saying. Most of the opposition to Washoe came from linguists among others who did not want to believe a chimpanzee could learn; they wanted humans to be unique. They said she was prompted. So, cameras were set-up, and revealed the chimpanzees interacted with each other without the presence of humans. The whole controversy with Nim–not brought up in the way Washoe was. The only way one can easily learn a language is to be taught it from birth, which Nim wasn't. Washoe was immersed in sign, like a deaf child, and so learned it, whereas he did not. While controversy should be included, the findings of Project Washoe are well agreed upon among most scientists. Friendofwashoe (talk) 00:19, 26 November 2007 (UTC)friendofwashoe

"Most of the opposition to Washoe came from linguists among others who did not want to believe a chimpanzee could learn; they wanted humans to be unique." Well I had to say I choked on my coffee reading that bit. It sounds like the classic ploy of shooting the messenger/ad hominem/playing the player. From what I can gather most of the incredulity was down to the project having vague control and evaluation protocols.

That aside how can ASL possibly have considerably fewer lexical items that English- even extended vocabulary could be at least spell signed, no??? That would be suggesting that ASL speakers live in a completely different culture with fewer things and concepts or worse like somesort of 19th century junk would suggest that the deaf are less conceptually aware than the hearing. Any adult human with a vocab of a few hundred words would be deemed as suffering from some sort of neurological disorder.

I take it the title of that book "Next of Kin" refers to chimps being an evolutionary relative; that just goes to show how fundamentally flawed their whole stance is considering that chimps are not our nearest evolutionary relative, but rather the nearest SURVIVING. The closest of relatives are dead and chimps are on a vastly more ancient evolutionary branch away from us. If we were to wipe out every species between us and grass would that make grass a viable candidate for language acquisition!

The question isn't about emotional responses to the uniqueness of language but rather the methods behind the conclusion published by 'Project Washoe'. The fact that chimps show no independent aptitude for language is possibly a hint at who started off with a emotive bias?- Washoe's Elocution Teacher —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.110.167.162 (talk) 22:33, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Washoe did not acquire a human language. While she learned a large number of signs (and a child of any age does not typically know 14,000 words), she didn't learn grammar. Even if she used some kind of logical ordering, this was spatiotemporal logic/importance rather than grammar. The grammar of sign languages is influenced by the same kind of logic, so ordering similarities exhibited by Washoe would be due to that. As far as I have seen, Washoe did not follow any idiosyncratic grammatical features of A.S.L. None of this is anything against Washoe -- I was upset when she died and her achievements are significant enough in reality to not need exaggeration. Salopian (talk) 00:38, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Multiple articles on great ape language

This article is one of at least 16 articles on Wikipedia primarily about the fascinating but controversial subject of Great ape language. These articles have been created independently and contain much interesting but uncoordinated information, varying levels of NPOV, and differences in categorization, stubbing, and references. Those of us working on them should explore better coordinating our efforts so as to share the best we have created and avoid unnecessary duplication. I have somewhat arbitrarily put the list of 16 articles on Talk:Great ape language and would encourage us to informally coordinate efforts there. Martinp 18:01, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Clarifications

Note that someone inserted the following HTML comment into the article:

"Potential and limitation of other species' use of human languages is likely to come from an integration of the results of all these projects, rather than an essentially historical pursuit of what did or did not happen in Project Washoe.{{unclear}}{{Fact}}<!-- Is this statement a very complicated and polite way of saying to people like the Nim Chimpsky researchers: "Don't you dare doubt the results of Project Washoe!"?-->"

Also, the article states:

"Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker believes that the argument that Washoe is the first non-human to acquire a human language is generally considered without scientific support (see Pinker, 1994)."

"Generally considered" by whom? Does this mean Pinker himself believes there's "generally" no scientific basis for the claim or is he merely reporting a "general" lack of support of the claim among scientists? - dcljr (talk) 18:54, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Need quotes

Can we get some of Washoe's quotes, like we see in Nim Chimpsky? Badagnani 21:24, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Final paragraph

I think Nim Chimpsky is often seen as a refutation of it rather than a failed replication; while he could pick up signs, the researchers basically showed that he wasn't actually using a language but rather simply responding to operant conditioning, doing "tricks" rather than actually using language. It wasn't so much "we can't do what they did" as "The Washoe folks were fooling themselves and here's why". Titanium Dragon (talk) 01:36, 7 May 2008 (UTC)