Talk:Washoe (chimpanzee)

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This page is not a forum for general discussion about Washoe (chimpanzee). Any such comments may be removed or refactored. Please limit discussion to improvement of this article. You may wish to ask factual questions about Washoe (chimpanzee) at the Reference desk.

More than half of this article is arguments or cases against the shit 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)[reply]

Anyone who says that she could not understand language is just kidding themselves. She did aquire language, not just some 'symbols.' If you are skeptical, go to a Chimposium at CHCI located at the CWU campus in Ellensburg. The chimps are not 'trained', but rather have aquired language. Anyone who actually WORKS with the chimps and talks with them will know this. It is very irresponsible for someone to post on here (Washoe's bio page) that she did not know ASL. You can ask any of the chimps at CHCI something using sign language, and you don't get some generic 'trained' response. The chimps there are extremely intellegent, and can understand ASL and the english language. If someone says different on here, than they are simply ignorant.

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)[reply]

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}}"

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)[reply]

Need quotes

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

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)[reply]

Well, a year and some-odd later, I decided to implement some changes to this article. I altered the criticism and other projects section, drawing heavily on the resources of the Nim Chimpsky article. It was far too credulous regarding the claims of those who ran project Washoe. Titanium Dragon (talk) 03:48, 5 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the opinion of Jane Goodall is important and must be in the article. Akhran (talk) 11:29, 5 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The only thing Nim Chimpsky "refuted" was the claim that healthy child development can take place in a cage in a laboratory. How well do you think a human child would do if raised in a cage, and had lab researchers pop in every now and then to feed them fruit and make hand signs at them? Would the fact that they'd be a babbling idiot "refute" the idea that humans are intelligent? Jrtayloriv (talk) 00:23, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Notes and references