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Teaching Sign Language to Chimpanzees
In this volume, the Gardners and their co-workers explore the continuity between human behavior and the rest of animal behavior and find no barriers to be broken, no chasms to be bridged, only unknown territory to be charted and fresh discoveries to be made.
With the beginning of Project Washoe in 1966, sign language studies of chimpanzees opened up a new field of scientific inquiry by providing a new tool for looking at the nature of language and intelligence and the relation between human and nonhuman intelligence. Here, the pioneers in this field review the unique procedures that they developed and the extensive body of evidence accumulated over the years. This close look at what the chimpanzees have actually done and said under rigorous laboratory conditions is the best answer to the heated controversies that have been generated by this line of research among ethologists, psychologists, anthropologists, linguists, and philosophers.
With the beginning of Project Washoe in 1966, sign language studies of chimpanzees opened up a new field of scientific inquiry by providing a new tool for looking at the nature of language and intelligence and the relation between human and nonhuman intelligence. Here, the pioneers in this field review the unique procedures that they developed and the extensive body of evidence accumulated over the years. This close look at what the chimpanzees have actually done and said under rigorous laboratory conditions is the best answer to the heated controversies that have been generated by this line of research among ethologists, psychologists, anthropologists, linguists, and philosophers.
342 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1989
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January 27, 2025
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS FROM THE TRAINERS OF WASHOE, AND SOME OTHERS
Psychologists Allen Gardner, Beatrix Gardner, and Thomas Canfort wrote in the Preface to this 1989 book, “With the beginning of Project Washoe in 1966, sign language studies of chimpanzees provided a new tool for comparative studies of intelligence and communication. With time, the methodology of the research has developed and the scope of investigation has enlarged… investigators … report the methods and findings of their laboratories, summarize recent developments, and point out future directions in plain language that should make the discussion accessible to a wide range of readers… This volume began as a way of collecting earlier reports and publishing them together with the most recent findings in one easily accessible place.” (Pg. xv)
They continue, “There are other ways to teach sign language and to test for the results. The poor results of Project Nim at Columbia university… are puzzling until the methods of Project Nim are compared with the methods of the Reno laboratory. After Nim left Columbia he went to the University of Oklahoma where he found human conversational partners who followed Roger Fouts’s procedures rather than the operant rigor and drill of the Columbia University laboratory.” (Pg. xvi-xvii)
They explain. “One way to tell a chimpanzee or a child that ‘This is the sign for X’ is to take their hands and mold them into the sign while putting them through the movement. We call this procedure ‘moulding.’… The sixth sign that Washoe acquired, and the first that she acquired by mounding, was TICKLE.” (Pg. 18)
They note, “Operant conditioning was impractical as a method of teaching signs. Once it had been introduced into the vocabulary by whatever method, it was equally impractical to attempt to reward all appropriate usage by prompt and consistent delivery of appropriate goods and services. Even in those few cases where prompt and consistent rewards might be practical, all that we could hope to teach in this way would be a set of requests. Meanwhile, all connected discourse or conversation would certainly be disrupted by such a procedure. For the objectives of cross-fostering, the only practical way to proceed was to treat [the apes] as if they had an intrinsic motive to communicate with us, the way human parents treat human children.” (Pg. 19)
They recount, “Eventually, a prominent student [Herbert Terrace] of B.F. Skinner fielded a rigorously operant version of Project Washoe, with the chimpanzee Nim… This was carried to the point where research assistants were forbidden to treat Nim like a child… They were even forbidden to comfort him as he cried out in the night… Training sessions were conducted in a small room designed to simulate an operant conditioning chamber… Mostly, training sessions consisted of demonstrating signs for Nim to imitate and showing him things to name, then rewarding correct responses with the requested object or with some other treat…
“It can hardly be surprising that videotape records of these training sessions showed Nim mostly imitating the trainer’s signs and begging for treats. Terrace concluded that Nim lacked ‘the motivation needed to sign about things other than requests.. Can you instill a greater motivation to sign than we managed to instill in Nim?’ .. It seems more likely that Nim grabbed so much because his trainers provided conditions that evoked grabbing rather than communication. Nim’s signs were usually requests because his trainers taught him to use signs for requests rather than for communication. The relentless application of extrinsic incentives evoked the extrinsic responses that stifled communication. Human children …. [are] reared in an environment that evokes communication rather than grabbing. Even in the case of Nim very different results were obtained when, after leaving Terrace’s laboratory, Nim found himself among conversational partners rather than operant conditioners.” (Pg. 21-22)
The Gardners and Patrick Drumm state, “[P.] Lieberman … has proposed that chimpanzees cannot learn English because they cannot form the phonemes of human speech, that the impediment is in the design of their vocal tract. But human beings can speak intelligibly even when they must overcome severe injury to their vocal tract. In our view, it is the obligatory attachment of vocal behavior to emotional state that makes it so difficult, perhaps impossible, for chimpanzees to speak English words. They can, however, use their hands in the arbitrary connections between signs and referents.” (Pg. 49)
The Gardners state in another article, “Early in Project Washoe, we learned that when she was too anxious to earn her reward---when she was too hungry or the reward too desirable---then we could expect no more from Washoe than the absolute minimum amount or quality of response necessary to get the reward. Whenever used, food rewards had to be very small… more symbolic than nourishing. Attempting to reward Washoe for correct replies in the testing situation created procedural difficulties that we avoided with [other apes] by rewarding them for prompt, clear replies, regardless of correctness.” (Pg. 188)
The Gardners and Van Cantfort summarize, “The acquisition of signs by chimpanzees---just as the acquisition of words and signs by children---can be characterized by three networks of connections that develop concurrently. The first of these networks develops between signs and their referents; the second develops among the signs themselves, and governs the ways in which they can be combined, and the third develops between the signing of participants in discourse, and makes possible conversational interchanges.” (Pg. 237)
Roger Fouts, Deborah Fouts, and Thomas Van Canfort explain in an article, “In October 1970, Roger Fouts brought Washoe to the Institute for Primate Studies… where he had been appointed as Research Associate. The University of Oklahoma maintained a colony of 18 chimpanzees at IPS, and Fouts planned to continue the research with Washoe there, with new objectives and new questions. Would Washoe sign to the other chimpanzees? If Washoe signed to them, what would she sign? Would the other chimpanzees learn signs, either from human caregivers or from Washoe herself? The long range goal of the continuation of Project Washoe was to explore the cultural transmission of ASL. Would Washoe pass on her signing skills to an offspring?” (Pg. 280)
They summarize, “Loulis [Washoe’s ‘adopted’ son] acquires signing and other skills from Washoe and the younger chimpanzees in his community. As in human language acquisition … the chimpanzee mother actively taught her offspring, and the infant actively learned. The laboratory environment provided interesting events and an enriched social atmosphere… Data collection by trained observers was a matter of course---as much a part of the routine as serving meals and cleaning. Because of this we have been able to examine the development of sexual behavior, communication, and other skills in Louis without disrupting them, and in this way, obtained a comprehensive record of cultural transmission.” (Pg. 291)
This book will be of interest to those studying the ‘ape language’ experiments.
Psychologists Allen Gardner, Beatrix Gardner, and Thomas Canfort wrote in the Preface to this 1989 book, “With the beginning of Project Washoe in 1966, sign language studies of chimpanzees provided a new tool for comparative studies of intelligence and communication. With time, the methodology of the research has developed and the scope of investigation has enlarged… investigators … report the methods and findings of their laboratories, summarize recent developments, and point out future directions in plain language that should make the discussion accessible to a wide range of readers… This volume began as a way of collecting earlier reports and publishing them together with the most recent findings in one easily accessible place.” (Pg. xv)
They continue, “There are other ways to teach sign language and to test for the results. The poor results of Project Nim at Columbia university… are puzzling until the methods of Project Nim are compared with the methods of the Reno laboratory. After Nim left Columbia he went to the University of Oklahoma where he found human conversational partners who followed Roger Fouts’s procedures rather than the operant rigor and drill of the Columbia University laboratory.” (Pg. xvi-xvii)
They explain. “One way to tell a chimpanzee or a child that ‘This is the sign for X’ is to take their hands and mold them into the sign while putting them through the movement. We call this procedure ‘moulding.’… The sixth sign that Washoe acquired, and the first that she acquired by mounding, was TICKLE.” (Pg. 18)
They note, “Operant conditioning was impractical as a method of teaching signs. Once it had been introduced into the vocabulary by whatever method, it was equally impractical to attempt to reward all appropriate usage by prompt and consistent delivery of appropriate goods and services. Even in those few cases where prompt and consistent rewards might be practical, all that we could hope to teach in this way would be a set of requests. Meanwhile, all connected discourse or conversation would certainly be disrupted by such a procedure. For the objectives of cross-fostering, the only practical way to proceed was to treat [the apes] as if they had an intrinsic motive to communicate with us, the way human parents treat human children.” (Pg. 19)
They recount, “Eventually, a prominent student [Herbert Terrace] of B.F. Skinner fielded a rigorously operant version of Project Washoe, with the chimpanzee Nim… This was carried to the point where research assistants were forbidden to treat Nim like a child… They were even forbidden to comfort him as he cried out in the night… Training sessions were conducted in a small room designed to simulate an operant conditioning chamber… Mostly, training sessions consisted of demonstrating signs for Nim to imitate and showing him things to name, then rewarding correct responses with the requested object or with some other treat…
“It can hardly be surprising that videotape records of these training sessions showed Nim mostly imitating the trainer’s signs and begging for treats. Terrace concluded that Nim lacked ‘the motivation needed to sign about things other than requests.. Can you instill a greater motivation to sign than we managed to instill in Nim?’ .. It seems more likely that Nim grabbed so much because his trainers provided conditions that evoked grabbing rather than communication. Nim’s signs were usually requests because his trainers taught him to use signs for requests rather than for communication. The relentless application of extrinsic incentives evoked the extrinsic responses that stifled communication. Human children …. [are] reared in an environment that evokes communication rather than grabbing. Even in the case of Nim very different results were obtained when, after leaving Terrace’s laboratory, Nim found himself among conversational partners rather than operant conditioners.” (Pg. 21-22)
The Gardners and Patrick Drumm state, “[P.] Lieberman … has proposed that chimpanzees cannot learn English because they cannot form the phonemes of human speech, that the impediment is in the design of their vocal tract. But human beings can speak intelligibly even when they must overcome severe injury to their vocal tract. In our view, it is the obligatory attachment of vocal behavior to emotional state that makes it so difficult, perhaps impossible, for chimpanzees to speak English words. They can, however, use their hands in the arbitrary connections between signs and referents.” (Pg. 49)
The Gardners state in another article, “Early in Project Washoe, we learned that when she was too anxious to earn her reward---when she was too hungry or the reward too desirable---then we could expect no more from Washoe than the absolute minimum amount or quality of response necessary to get the reward. Whenever used, food rewards had to be very small… more symbolic than nourishing. Attempting to reward Washoe for correct replies in the testing situation created procedural difficulties that we avoided with [other apes] by rewarding them for prompt, clear replies, regardless of correctness.” (Pg. 188)
The Gardners and Van Cantfort summarize, “The acquisition of signs by chimpanzees---just as the acquisition of words and signs by children---can be characterized by three networks of connections that develop concurrently. The first of these networks develops between signs and their referents; the second develops among the signs themselves, and governs the ways in which they can be combined, and the third develops between the signing of participants in discourse, and makes possible conversational interchanges.” (Pg. 237)
Roger Fouts, Deborah Fouts, and Thomas Van Canfort explain in an article, “In October 1970, Roger Fouts brought Washoe to the Institute for Primate Studies… where he had been appointed as Research Associate. The University of Oklahoma maintained a colony of 18 chimpanzees at IPS, and Fouts planned to continue the research with Washoe there, with new objectives and new questions. Would Washoe sign to the other chimpanzees? If Washoe signed to them, what would she sign? Would the other chimpanzees learn signs, either from human caregivers or from Washoe herself? The long range goal of the continuation of Project Washoe was to explore the cultural transmission of ASL. Would Washoe pass on her signing skills to an offspring?” (Pg. 280)
They summarize, “Loulis [Washoe’s ‘adopted’ son] acquires signing and other skills from Washoe and the younger chimpanzees in his community. As in human language acquisition … the chimpanzee mother actively taught her offspring, and the infant actively learned. The laboratory environment provided interesting events and an enriched social atmosphere… Data collection by trained observers was a matter of course---as much a part of the routine as serving meals and cleaning. Because of this we have been able to examine the development of sexual behavior, communication, and other skills in Louis without disrupting them, and in this way, obtained a comprehensive record of cultural transmission.” (Pg. 291)
This book will be of interest to those studying the ‘ape language’ experiments.
November 26, 2007
A collection of articles outlining the process and scientific findings of Project Washoe. Amazing for those interested in working with primates. RIP Washoe, Hug/Love.
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