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Teaching Language to an Ape
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... Over the past decades, individuals from various species have learned diverse symbol systems including gesture-meaning associations (Herman et al., 1993) acoustic-meaning associations (Herman et al., 1984) and associations between visual symbols or objects. These visual symbols and objects include lexigrams (Rumbaugh, 1977;Brakke & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1995;Hopper, et al., 2017, Cunha & Rhoads, 2020Huskisson, et al., 2022) or tokens (Premack & Premack, 1972), with vocalizations and meanings. Notably, these types of symbolic representations all use whole symbol units, such as a whole word or a whole image, to represent a given meaning. ...
... Notably, several species, including capuchin monkeys and Goffin's cockatoos, have been shown to use tokens to facilitate abstract processes, such as learning that the number of tokens refers to a quantity of food (Addessi et al., 2008;Laumer et al., 2020). A chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), has also used tokens as part of a complex communication system, learning to associate 130 unique tokens with words and combining them together for rudimentary grammar (Premack & Premack, 1972). ...
... Within the context of animals' symbol decoding skills, this study more deeply explored the recombinatorial abilities of a cockatoo. Such processes may rely on similar cognitive functions as primates exchanging tokens (Premack & Premack, 1972), bonobos touching lexigrams (Rumbaugh, 1977;Brakke & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1995) or dolphins recognizing gestures and acoustic communication (Herman et al., 1984) in which a whole word is contained in a single symbol. ...
Symbolic representation acquisition is the complex cognitive process consisting of learning to use a symbol to stand for something else. A variety of non-human animals can engage in symbolic representation learning. One particularly complex form of symbol representation is the associations between orthographic symbols and speech sounds, known as grapheme–phoneme correspondence. To date, there has been little evidence that animals can learn this form of symbolic representation. Here, we evaluated whether an Umbrella cockatoo (Cacatua alba) can learn letter-speech correspondence using English words. The bird-participant was trained with phonics instruction and then tested on pairs of index cards while the experimenter spoke the word. The words were unknown to the bird and the experimenter was blinded to the correct card position. The cockatoo’s accuracy (M = 71%) was statistically significant. Further, we found a strong correlation between the bird’s word-identification success and the number of overlapping letters between words, where the more overlapping letters between words, the more likely the cockatoo answered incorrectly. Our results strongly suggest that parrots may have the ability to learn grapheme–phoneme correspondences.
... Short strings of rulegoverned plastic words formed the physical basis of this language, which the chimpanzees used in both comprehension and production. See D. Premack and Premack (1994) for a summary of the procedure and D. Premack (1976) and A. J. Premack and Premack (1972) for extended examples. ...
... One juvenile and 4 adult chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) were included in this study. One adult, Sarah, had been trained previously on the symbolic language system developed by D. Premack (e.g., A. J. Premack & Premack, 1972;D. Premack, 1976). ...
Three chimpanzees with a history of conditional and numeric token training spontaneously matched relations between relations under conditions of nondifferential reinforcement. Heretofore, this conceptual ability was demonstrated only in language-trained chimpanzees. The performance levels of the language-naive animals in this study, however, were equivalent to those of a 4th animal—Sarah—whose history included language training and analogical problem solving. There was no evidence that associative factors mediated successful performance in any of the animals. Prior claims of a profound disparity between language-trained and language-naive chimpanzees apparently can be attributed to prior experience with arbitrary tokens consistently associated with abstract relations and not language per se.
... The brief review below focusses on three of these research programs that produced data particularly relevant to the question of whether our closest relatives are able to obtain any grammatical understanding. Premack (1971) and Premack and Premack (1972) demonstrated that the chimpanzee Sarah had competence on a number of language abilities. Sarah was able to associate different concepts with different arbitrary signs (fulfilling Peirce's (1867) definition of a symbol). ...
... Kanzi's performance with these reversible sentences-building on prior work at the Yerkes with Lana, Sherman, Austin, and others , as well as Sarah (Premack, 1971;Premack and Premack, 1972) and Washoe, Moja, Tatu, and Dar (Gardner and Gardner, 1994)-suggests apes can learn to understand an arbitrary symbolic system to code argument structure. The fact that Nim Chimsky (Terrace et al., 1979) apparently did not show these abilities is of course not relevant to whether these other ape research programs using different methods were successful (there are many reasons why a research methodology may fail to show some cognitive ability in an animal besides that the animal actually lacks that ability, e.g., inadequate motivation, inadequate learning protocol, etc. (Essock-Vitale and Seyfarth, 1986)). ...
Ape language acquisition studies have demonstrated that apes can learn arbitrary mappings between different auditory or visual patterns and concepts, satisfying the definition of symbol use. The extent to which apes understand aspects of grammar is less well accepted. On the production side, several studies have shown that apes sometimes combine two or more symbols together, in non-random patterns. However, this is quite limited compared to human language production. On the comprehension side, much greater abilities have been reported in apes. One of the most famous examples is Kanzi, a bonobo who reportedly responded correctly to a large number of novel commands. However, based on his performance on a small subset of reversible sentences—where the understanding of English syntax was critical—the extent to which he demonstrated grammatical knowledge has been questioned. Using a randomization study it is shown here that his performance actually vastly exceeds random chance, supporting the contention that he does in fact understand word order grammatical rules in English. This of course represents only one aspect of English grammar, and does not suggest he has completely human grammatical abilities. However, it does show that he understands one of the arbitrary grammatical devices used in many languages: The use of word order to code argument relations. It also removes from serious consideration the view that apes lack any kind of grammatical ability. From an evolutionary perspective, Kanzi’s ability is most likely to result from homologous brain circuitry, although this is ultimately an empirical question.
... For example, Sarah, a language-trained chimpanzee, acquired symbols for the abstract concepts "same" and "different" and also appeared to have interpreted if-then hypotheticals, like "If Sarah take apple, then Mary give chocolate to Sarah" (A. J. Premack & Premack, 1972). Another languagetrained ape, the bonobo Kanzi, understood complex requests to manipulate certain objects and used pictograms to communicate about them with his trainers but never with other bonobos (Savage-Rumbaugh et al., 1993). ...
Human language permits us to call to mind objects, events, and ideas that we cannot witness directly, either because they are absent or because they have no physical form (e.g., people we have not met, concepts like justice). What enables language to transmit such knowledge? We propose that a referential link between words, referents, and mental representations of those referents is key. This link enables us to form, access, and modify mental representations even when the referents themselves are absent ("absent reference"). In this review we consider the developmental and evolutionary origins of absent reference, integrating previously disparate literatures on absent reference in language and gesture in very young humans and gesture in nonhuman primates. We first evaluate when and how infants acquire absent reference during the process of language acquisition. With this as a foundation, we consider the evidence for absent reference in gesture in infants and in nonhuman primates. Finally, having woven these literatures together, we highlight new lines of research that promise to sharpen our understanding of the development of reference and its role in learning about the absent and the abstract.
... Two of the papers can be considered following the tradition of comparison between Homo sapiens and other primates (e.g., Premack and Premack, 1972) and shed light on the biological basis of human language emergence. ...
Editorial: From individual minds to language co-evolution: Psychological mechanisms for the evolution of cross-cultural and cross-species communication systems
... Two of the papers can be considered following the tradition of comparison between Homo sapiens and other primates (e.g., Premack and Premack, 1972) and shed light on the biological basis of human language emergence. ...
... The next stream of research shifted to the use of artificial languages to test the language learning ability of captive great apes. A chimpanzee named Sarah was trained to use plastic symbols as words and learned 130 words, including "same," "different," and "if-then" (Premack and Premack 1972). Another chimpanzee named Lana was trained to touch a keyboard with geometric configurations (lexigrams) that represented specific words (Rumbaugh et al. 1974). ...
... Although we do not find evidence for compositional tool behaviors in non-human primates, given our claim that the capacity for combinatoriality and compositionality in the technology domain is homologous to the capacity for combinatoriality and compositionality in the language domain, we argue that indisputable evidence of compositional language abilities in primates would be suggestive of their potential for compositional tool behaviors (and vice versa). There is suggestive evidence of limited compositionality in ape language comprehension studies (Gardner & Gardner, 1994;Greenfield & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991;Premack, 1971;Premack & Premack, 1972;, although there continues to be some debate (Wynne, 2008). Given that we argue for a likely overlap of cognitive abilities underlying tool use and language generally, this would suggest apes are likely capable of limited compositionality in tool use also, provided the optimal cultural and environmental niche encouraging it. ...
A crucial design feature of language useful for determining when grammatical language evolved in the human lineage is our ability to combine meaningless units to form a new unit with meaning (combinatoriality) and to further combine these meaningful units into a larger unit with a novel meaning (compositionality). There is overlap between neural bases that underlie hierarchical cognitive functions required for compositionality in both linguistic and nonlinguistic contexts (e.g., tool use). Therefore, evidence of compositional tool use in the archaeological record should signify, at the very least, the cognitive capacity for grammatical language by that point in time. We devise a novel system to evaluate the level of hierarchical nesting of tool components in single tool use activities. In the application of this system, we demonstrate that nonhuman primates, and by extension, the last common ancestor shared by Pan and Homo, are capable of basic combinatoriality; however, their technology does not approach the compositionality observable in modern human tool use. The prehistoric archaeological record supports a continuous evolution of combinatorial tool use into compositional tool use, with evidence for human-like levels of by 0.93 million years ago (Ma), or possibly as early as 1.7 Ma. While compositional language could have lagged behind compositional tool use, if language and technology coevolved according to the Technological Origin for Language hypothesis, which proposes a feedback system between the two, then evidence for hierarchical tool use structures implies a similar level of complexity in linguistic structures.
... Folgen von zwei Zeich.en ausgenommen, lieferte Nim keinerlei Hinweise, daB er diese regel- gemaE kombinieren konnte.Urn die nur miihsam dokurnentierbare Zeichensprache zu umgehen, ent- wickelren Premack undPremack (1972)eine Versuchsanordnung mit verschie- denartigen Plastiksymbolen, die einzelnen Worten entsprachen und die linear zu einfachen Satzen gelegt werden konnten. Ein rotes Viereck bedeutete dabei beispielsweise Banane, ein hellblaues Rechteck Aprikose. ...
... To do so, she had to search the correct token among eight facedown lexigram tokens distributed throughout the outdoor yard. Finally, Premack and Premack (1972) reported that a chimpanzee who was trained to use plastic word symbols for nouns and adjectives attributed symbols representing characteristics of an apple to not only a real apple but also to a blue plastic triangle that was the word for apple. As explained in the section "Self-awareness associated with mirror selfrecognition," passing the mark test indicates that great apes may have a secondary representation of the "me." ...
Investigations in the cognitive abilities of different animal species and children at different ages have revealed that consciousness comes in degrees. In this review, I will first address four cognitive abilities that are important to discriminate levels of consciousness: mirror self-recognition, theory of mind, mental time travel, and the capacity to entertain secondary representations. I will then examine putative relations between these abilities and assign them to three levels of consciousness (anoetic, noetic, autonoetic). Finally, I will discuss the implications of differences in consciousness for the understanding of behavioral organization in animals and humans and for animal welfare science. I will argue that, on one hand, implicit behavioral rules may account for results obtained in research on theory of mind and mental time travel abilities in animals and children. On the other hand, secondary representations may be the key to explain behaviors based on semantic memory as well as semantic future planning abilities observed in great apes and young children. These considerations are in accordance with the view that an explicit theory of mind and a continuous self through time are unique to humans.
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... Since a remarkable number of gesture types in the naturally used repertoire is shared among genera and species, they are thought to be phylogenetically quite old . What historically began with a focus on manual gestures limited to movements of the upper extremities in enculturated apes trained to use sign language (Gardner & Gardner, 1969;Premack & Premack, 1972;Patterson, 1978) has gradually expanded to include most of the bodily communication of primates. Gestures as defined by comparative research encompass movements of the entire body and body postures that are by definition inseparable from animal displays. ...
The presence of divergent and independent research traditions in the gestural and vocal domains of primate communication has resulted in major discrepancies in the definition and operationalization of cognitive concepts. However, in recent years, accumulating evidence from behavioural and neurobiological research has shown that both human and non‐human primate communication is inherently multimodal. It is therefore timely to integrate the study of gestural and vocal communication. Herein, we review evidence demonstrating that there is no clear difference between primate gestures and vocalizations in the extent to which they show evidence for the presence of key language properties: intentionality, reference, iconicity and turn‐taking. We also find high overlap in the neurobiological mechanisms producing primate gestures and vocalizations, as well as in ontogenetic flexibility. These findings confirm that human language had multimodal origins. Nonetheless, we note that in great apes, gestures seem to fulfil a carrying (i.e. predominantly informative) role in close‐range communication, whereas the opposite holds for face‐to‐face interactions of humans. This suggests an evolutionary shift in the carrying role from the gestural to the vocal stream, and we explore this transition in the carrying modality. Finally, we suggest that future studies should focus on the links between complex communication, sociality and cooperative tendency to strengthen the study of language origins.
... Part of the reason why this question remains open, despite an extensive literature comparing communication of humans and other apes (e.g. Premack 1971;Premack and Premack 1972;Hewes et al. 1973;Miles 1983;Savage-Rumbaugh 1988;Deacon 1989;Snowdon 1990;Corballis 1992;Savage-Rumbaugh et al. 1993;Povinelli et al. 1997;Tomasello and Camaioni 1997;Burling et al. 1993;Fitch 2000Fitch , 2005Tomasello and Zuberbühler 2002;Brinck and Gärdenfors 2003;Dunbar 2003;Gomez 2007;Pollick and DeWaal 2007;Tomasello 2007Tomasello , 2010Seyfarth and Cheney 2008;Liszkowski et al. 2009;Fedurek and Slocombe 2011;Gibson 2012;Scott-Phillips et al. 2015;Moore 2016;Zuberbühler and Gómez 2018), is that studies on human and nonhuman apes rely on different methodologies and definitions, and conceptualizations of gesture and communication (Scott and Pika 2012;Gillespie-Lynch et al. 2014;Fröhlich and Hobaiter 2018). For example, in adult humans, a major research goal is to investigate how gesture contributes to the acquisition and use of speech and the interaction between gestures and thought (e.g. ...
When we compare human gestures to those of other apes, it looks at first like there is nothing much to compare at all. In adult humans, gestures are thought to be a window into the thought processes accompanying language, and sign languages are equal to spoken language with all of its features. Some research firmly emphasises the differences between human gestures and those of other apes; however, the question about whether there are any commonalities is rarely investigated, and has mostly been confined to pointing gestures. In adult humans, gestures are thought to be a window into the thought processes accompanying language, and sign languages are equal to spoken languages with all of their features. This paper applies the methodology commonly used in the study of nonhuman ape gestures to the gestural communication of human children in their second year of life. We recorded (n = 13) children’s gestures in a natural setting with peers and caregivers in Germany and Uganda. Children employed 52 distinct gestures, 46 (89%) of which are present in the chimpanzee repertoire. Like chimpanzees, they used them both singly, and in sequences, and employed individual gestures flexibly towards different goals.
... Cross-fostering of apes by humans has a long history (Gardner and Gardner 1969;Hayes and Hayes 1954;Hillix and Rumbaugh 2004;Hoyt 1941;Kearton 1925;Kellogg and Kellogg 1933;Ladygina-Kohts 1935;Matsuzawa 1985;Miles 1990;Patterson and Cohn 1990;Premack and Premack 1972;Rumbaugh 1977;Savage-Rumbaugh 1986;Savage-Rumbaugh et al. 1978;Temerlin 1976;Witmer 1909). As noted by Kellogg (1968): ...
In his classic analysis, Gould (The mismeasure of man, WW Norton, New York, 1981) demolished the idea that intelligence was an inherent, genetic trait of different human groups by emphasizing, among other things, (a) its sensitivity to environmental input, (b) the incommensurate pre-test preparation of different human groups, and (c) the inadequacy of the testing contexts, in many cases. According to Gould, the root cause of these oversights was confirmation bias by psychometricians, an unwarranted commitment to the idea that intelligence was a fixed, immutable quality of people. By virtue of a similar, systemic interpretive bias, in the last two decades, numerous contemporary researchers in comparative psychology have claimed human superiority over apes in social intelligence, based on two-group comparisons between postindustrial, Western Europeans and captive apes, where the apes have been isolated from European styles of social interaction, and tested with radically different procedures. Moreover, direct comparisons of humans with apes suffer from pervasive lapses in argumentation: Research designs in wide contemporary use are inherently mute about the underlying psychological causes of overt behavior. Here we analyze these problems and offer a more fruitful approach to the comparative study of social intelligence, which focuses on specific individual learning histories in specific ecological circumstances.
... If-then conditionals are considered to be an integral constituent of human cognition and thinking (J.R. Anderson, 1983; Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 2002; Stalnaker, 1981), and rank among those linguistic universals that appear consistently across all languages (Greenberg, 1963). Indeed, children as young as two-years old (Scholnick & Wing, 1991, 1992) and even apes (Premack & Premack, 1972) are able to grasp the concept of if-then conditionals. What renders forming implementation intentions a distinct self-regulation strategy simply pertains to the content used in the if-then conditional statement: The if-part specifies an opportune situation for attaining a goal, while the then-part specifies an instrumental, goal-directed behaviour. ...
Implementation intentions (Gollwitzer, 1993, 1999, 2014) are if-then plans that help individuals attain their goals. Implementation intentions have proven beneficial in various domains in which individuals fall short of attaining their goals, from health behavior through academic achievement to interpersonal issues (for reviews, see Adriaanse, Vinkers, De Ridder, Hox, & De Wit, 2011; Bélanger-Gravel, Godin, & Amireault, 2013; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Gollwitzer, 2014; Hagger & Luszczynska, 2014). The aim of this chapter is to present research on how implementation intentions influence the affective, cognitive and conative components of consumer behavior. We outline the nature of implementation intentions and describe moderators and mediators identified in previous research. Next, we adopt the perspective of comprehensive models of consumer behavior (e.g., Bettman, 1979; Blackwell, Miniard, & Engel, 2006; Howard & Sheth, 1969) and systematically review implementation intention effects along the lines of these models. Specifically, we describe how implementation intentions affect information acquisition (i.e., perception, processing and comprehension), components of the decision process (i.e., pre- and post-decisional evaluation) and internal and external influences on behavior (i.e., affect, norms, priming and mimicry) in consumer context. We conclude by outlining topics for future research on implementation intentions in the domain of consumer behavior.
... Concerning great apes, the involvement of a high degree of social learning in acquisition of communicative abilities is supported by studies that show enculturation with humans giving apes a different gestural repertoire from that exhibited by their wild counterparts (Premack and Premack 1972). Furthermore, apes add to the complexity of social ontogeny by exhibiting perception of psychological facts about conspecifics as opposed to just external behaviors (Brothers 1990). ...
Social plasticity, the adjustment of social behavioral expression to the nuances of daily life, is an important facet of primate communication because it is a response to the selective pressures that make one form of communication more advantageous over another when utilized in specific social situations (Oliveira 2012). In this study examining social plasticity of orangutan communication as a function of sex, I compare the time budgets of communicative behaviors among female Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) at the Lowry Park Zoo, Florida. Sex-based social plasticity was defined as a behavioral difference between same-sex and opposite-sex interactions. Data collection included 65 hours of video, recorded observations, and frame-by- frame analysis using focal animal sampling. Communicative behavior differed significantly between same-sex and opposite-sex interactions (χ 2=35.13, df=1, p<0.01). When interacting with same-sex conspecifics, females spent most of their time utilizing tactile communication (86.8%), followed by visual communication (13.2%). When interacting with males, females spent most of their time utilizing visual communication (57.2%), followed by tactile communication (42.8%). No significant auditory communication was observed (<0.1%). I conclude that female orangutan communication exhibits sex-based social plasticity. I propose that this plasticity is a behavioral adaptation resulting from sex-specific social selective pressures.
Some emendations in Ch. A, B, F, H.
Ed. 4b: Some emendations added. Ch. A, B, F, H.
Everything we do involves language. Assuming no prior knowledge, this book offers students a contemporary introduction to the study of language. Each thought-provoking chapter is accessible to readers from a variety of fields, and is helpfully organized across six parts: sound; structure and meaning; language typologies and change; language and social aspects; language acquisition; and language, cognition, and the brain. The book's companion website also offers three brief chapters on language and computers; animal communication; and dialectal varieties of English. The chapters feature illustrative tables, figures and maps, along with three types of pedagogical boxes (Linguistic Tidbits; Pause and Reflect; and Eyes on World Languages) that break up text, contextualize information, and provide colourful accents that give real data from languages across the globe. Key words are bolded and defined in a glossary at the end of the book, while end-of-chapter summaries and practice exercises reinforce the key points discussed.
Neuronale Systeme sind eine „Errungenschaft“ der Eumetazoa. Bei ihnen stellen Nervensysteme eine unbedingte Voraussetzung für die sensomotorische und autonome Integration dar. Die Aktivität des Nervensystems bestimmt das gesamte Verhalten von relativ einfachen motorischen Programmen bis hin zu komplexen Handlungen höherer Tiere, wie Fernorientierung, Generalisierung, Begriffsbildung, Planen und Denken.
(This is the introdution form: https://www.mentis.de/view/title/57822)
How do we know if animals can think? In extension of the previous debate on human-animal relations, this book analyzes the conditions and contexts of the scientific acquisition of our knowledge of animals.
The current discussions within animal philosophy revolve around the three central questions of whether we can attribute a mind to animals, what the difference between humans and animals is, and how humans should behave towards animals. Our knowledge about animals is mostly taken from empirical research. However, the methods, theories, and contexts of empirical research have not yet been addressed. The book aims to fill this gap with the central concept of methodological signatures, which allows the systematic comparison of research approaches based on their fundamental methodological, ontological, and epistemological assumptions.
Monografia jest próbą przedstawienia aktualnego stanu wiedzy z zakresu psychologii porównawczej oraz etologii poznawczej. Maciej Trojan skupia się szczególnie na pięciu obszarach: komunikacji i języku, kompetencjach numerycznych, użyciu i wytwarzaniu narzędzi, teorii umysłu oraz mentalnych podróżach w czasie. Podejmuje też kwestię budzącą powszechne zainteresowanie: problem świadomości i samoświadomości u zwierząt.
Creation sub-question n°2: what are the parts, strengths or flaws, of the pre-existing animal study methodology upon which our model must be built?
This paper offers a brief critical review of some of the so-called “Talking Animals” projects. The findings from the projects are compared with linguistic data from Homo sapiens and with newer evidence gleaned from experiments on animal syntactic skills. The question concerning what had the so-called “Talking Animals” really done is broken down into two categories – words and (recursive) syntax. The (relative) failure of the animal projects in both categories points mainly to the fact that the core feature of language – hierarchical recursive syntax – is missing in the pseudo-linguistic feats of the animals.
The question of complexity, as in what makes one language more 'complex' than another, is a long-established topic of debate amongst linguists. Recently, this issue has been complemented with the view that languages are complex adaptive systems, in which emergence and self-organization play major roles. However, few students of the phenomenon have gone beyond the basic assessment of the number of units and rules in a language (what has been characterized as 'bit complexity') or shown some familiarity with the science of complexity. This book reveals how much can be learned by overcoming these limitations, especially by adopting developmental and evolutionary perspectives. The contributors include specialists of language acquisition, evolution and ecology, grammaticization, phonology, and modeling, all of whom approach languages as dynamical, emergent, and adaptive complex systems.
Some people think that humans would be distinct from animals. Humans would be better, smarter, and more evolved than any other animal. Due to our language, our mind would be more developed, our brain more evolved, and our moral status would be higher than the moral status of every other animal. Humans, and only humans, would be moral agents.
In this thesis, I will take a short historical look at the development of the essentials of man, so called Anthropina, created in the last 2,000 years. I criticize the current and historically grown top-down view and instead adopt a bottom-up perspective. This takes into account various aspects and interdisciplinary findings. Using the example of morality, I show how linguistic mechanisms contribute to arbitrarily pulling the human-animal-border. Instead, I show a bottom-up view of morality, which is free of speciesism and lets us think of morality independent of theological and speciesistic arguments. This view is a tool to understand why conscious beings act in their free will as they act. This approach also means that we have to see many animals as morally acting agents, which inevitably raises questions about language and consciousness.
Language and consciousness today are being seen as the distinguishing features of humans from animals. Both features are inseparably connected. In this work I shed light on this dichotomy between the ontological categories of man and animal with regard to these two arguments. I show a bottom-up approach of language that proposes three levels of communication. The first level is the associative signal transmission, which is widespread in the animal kingdom. The second level is communication, which can take place both intra- and interpersonal, and which builds a bridge to consciousness. The third level is substantial (gehaltvolle) communication. This level of communication is more or less what was seen as "language" in the history of the human-animal-border. However, such a bottom-up view of language requires conscious experience, conscious processing of impressions, ideas or feelings.
Therefore, in the last part of the work, I study the nature of consciousness. I discuss different definitions of consciousness, from philosophical to linguistic views. In order to approach the phenomenon of consciousness, I then follow Antonio Damasio's representationalist model. In a critique of his model, I show how his top-down view can be rethought bottom-up in order to approach the question of consciousness in non-human animals. I do not claim to explain consciousness, but instead evaluate a model with which we can describe different levels of consciousness and with which we can make well-founded statements on the question of the human-animal-border. It turns out that the highest form of consciousness, the extended consciousness, is not directly observable, but cognitive concepts such as the theory of mind are examinable. Because those cognitive concepts are a result of the extended consciousness in its highest form, they are crucial for our research question.
In this thesis I show that a strict bottom-up view combined with recent scientific findings and a modern understanding of evolution and mind can only lead to the insight that some animals are moral agents and that language and consciousness are very likely no Anthropina anymore.
Beluga whales use calls to convey various information to group members. Is this communication similar to humans? We addressed this question by using the framework of stimulus equivalence. Stimulus equivalence consists of three phases: if the animal is trained to match A to B and B to C, symmetry is demonstrated by matching BA and CB, transitivity by matching AC, and equivalence by matching CA. We tested the spontaneous establishment of cross-modal stimulus equivalence between visual and auditory symbols in a beluga whale nicknamed Nack. Nack could make symmetrical choices in novel objects untrained. Moreover, visual/auditory cross-modal transitivity was formed spontaneously. Nack succeeded in six tasks, including an untrained task concerning stimulus equivalence. We conclude that Nack spontaneously formed cross-modal stimulus equivalence between visual and auditory symbols. Cross-modal stimulus equivalence was considered to exist only in humans because of linguistic faculty; however, Nack exhibited the same understanding as humans.
Sarah the chimpanzee was the primary participant in David Premack’s language studies initiated at University of California at Santa Barbara in 1967. The first author was an undergraduate assistant training Sarah from 1967 to 1969. This article describes some of the early work with Sarah and our recent search for her. Sarah’s whereabouts during the intervening years, and subsequent reunion with her in 2016 at Chimp Haven, a chimpanzee sanctuary in Louisiana, are described. It was found that despite her illness, Sarah engaged with the first author and demonstrated that she remembered him and the mechanics of the communication procedure that served as the foundation for testing Sarah’s cognitive reasoning abilities as they pertained to language. There was no evidence she remembered any of the 5 symbolic nouns that were presented during a matching-to-sample procedure. The authors expressed their gratitude to the staff at Chimp Haven for the excellent care of Sarah.
Throughout most of the 20th century, analytical and reductionist approaches have dominated in biological, social, and humanistic sciences, including linguistics and communication. We generally believed we could account for fundamental phenomena in invoking basic elemental units. Although the amount of knowledge generated was certainly impressive, we have also seen limitations of this approach. Discovering the sound formants of human languages, for example, has allowed us to know vital aspects of the ‘material’ plane of verbal codes, but it tells us little about significant aspects of their social functions. I firmly believe, therefore, that alongside a linguistics that looks ‘inward’ there should also be a linguistics that looks ‘outward’, or one even that is constructed ‘from the outside’, a linguistics that I refer to elsewhere as ‘holistic’ though it could be identified by a different name. My current vision is to promote simultaneously the perspective that goes from the part to the whole and that which goes from the whole to the parts, i.e., both from the top down and from the bottom up.
This goal is shared with other disciplines which recognize that many phenomena related to life are interwoven, self-organising, emergent and processual. Thus, we need to re-examine how we have conceived of reality, both the way we have looked at it and the images we have used to talk about it. Several approaches now grouped under the label of complexity have been elaborated towards this objective of finding new concepts and ways of thinking that better fit the complex organisation of facts and events.
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Communication deficiencies have long been recognized as among the most conspicuous and debilitating limitations in severely developmentally delayed and multiply handicapped children. Nearly all autistic children with an IQ below 50 fail to acquire speech and language (Howlin, 1981; Rutter, 1966). Likewise, about 75 per cent of all retarded children with IQs below 50 show severe limitations in acquiring functional communication skills (Jordan, 1967; Reich, 1978).
The first chapter introduced several cardinal principles which comprise the intellectual foundation of the present work. The first of these is that any system which exhibits organisation contains information. This conceptualisation of information — that information is a basic property of the universe and is as “real” as are matter and energy — from here on in will be taken for granted.
Adopting Aristotle’s idea of time as just one aspect of processes, it seems logical to consider the time span necessary for any change in a system as constrained by the properties of this system. Conversely, we can, from an observed rate of a change, exclude certain processes from attempts to explain the change. Considering the whole range of organisms, demonstrated evolutionary changes as defined by changes in gene frequency, can vary from days to millions of years. But as far as man is concerned, such changes are, as a rule, rather slow and must in any case take several generations, while some behavioural and social changes can proceed at a higher rate.
Critical to the study of language are the preconceived theoretical notions a scientist brings to the experimental situation. For example, in the early attempts to teach chimpanzees a language (Witmer, 1909; Kohts, 1935; Hayes and Hayes, 1951, 1952; Kellogg, 1968) the egocentric error that language must be vocal prevailed. These approaches attempted to teach vocal speech to the chimpanzee because humans use vocal speech. Their error was to ignore the nature of the chimpanzee. For example, the repertoire of behaviors that the chimpanzee brings to the experimental situation. These approaches attempted to force the chimpanzee to use a communication modality inappropriate to its biology. Gardner and Gardner (1969, 1971, 1975) avoided this error by using a human gestural language compatible with the chimpanzees’ communication system in the wild. The Gardners’ approach was consistent with prior attempts in that they all considered language to be inseparable from social context and for this reason the chimpanzees were raised in the socially rich environment of a human home.
This chapter discusses some of the basic elements of modern evolutionary theory as it applies within biology. This theory seeks to account for changes that take place within populations of plants and animals over time. The individuals making up such populations at a given moment display wide variability in both phenotype as well as genotype. There are two main forces in evolution: variation created by random factors and a filter, whose properties are determined by factors that may be subsumed under the rubric of natural selection, which maintains or alters distributions of characteristics in various ways. One of the outcomes of the gradual accrual of divergent characteristics is the radiation of species, that is, the development of populations that do not interbreed. Such populations may be separated in time or may be coextant. The barriers to interbreeding involve a number of factors termed as isolating mechanisms. The biochemical evidence derives from three basic types of comparisons. One involves combining single strands from the DNA of two species. Such strands will recombine except at those points at which they are chemically different. A second method involves comparing the sequencing of amino acids in various types of protein molecules, such as those found in the blood. Finally, the immunological approach involves injecting a protein, such as serum–albumin, taken from one species into an animal from another species. This will result in antibodies being produced.
This chapter discusses the phylogeny of sign language. Language, like every other part of culture, has had an evolutionary career, and the roots of language may be as deeply grounded in our biological constitutions as for instance our predisposition to use our hands. The chapter discusses the sign language used by animals such as chimpanzees, gorilla, pongids, and orangutan. The pongid communication is multimodal, and the hand, arm, and foot gestures by pongids are usually accompanied by significant facial expressions, glances, body positions, and body movements. In modern times, sign languages have occasionally emerged to fulfill the communication needs of one or a few profoundly deaf members in larger hearing communities. While European monastic sign languages, the complex gesture languages of South Indian dance drama, the various sign languages in use around the world in tribal and other societies, and the modern sign languages of the deaf and of the workers in specialized occupations occupy only a tiny fraction of the time span considered in the phylogenetic model, their study should illuminate much of what is now very imperfectly known about the properties and capacities of such communication systems.
The Premacks, Ann James and David, were interested in animal cognition and language very early, at least as early as 1954 (personal communication, David Premack, 1954) and started preparatory work with monkeys soon after that time. In 1964,1 the Premacks adopted two young female chimpanzees named Sarah and Gussie. Sarah proved to be an excellent student, but Gussie never learned a single word. The Premacks later worked on language training with several other animals, but none of them were as intelligent as Sarah. A characteristic of the Premacks’ work is that their primary interest was in the cognition of chimpanzees, with language regarded more as a window to the chimpanzee mind than as the center of their attention. David Premack’s discussion2 of the. relative problem-solving abilities of language-trained and non-language-trained chimpanzees makes that clear. He found striking individual differences in intelligence between chimpanzees in each group, whether language-trained or not: “We have...had both gifted and ungifted animals in each group. Sarah is a bright animal by any standards, but so is Jessie, one of the non-language-trained animals. The groups are also comparable at the other end of the continuum, Peony’s negative gifts being well matched by those of Luvy” (p. 125).
For over a decade, experimenters have claimed some success in teaching chimpanzees to converse with human trainers and with each other in strings of plastic chips, electronically projected geometrical shapes, and signs from ASL.1 Compared to most performing animals, the chimpanzees have mastered an impressive number of symbols, but none has anything approaching the massive vocabulary of a human language speaker. Utterances are typically short with little, if any, syntactic complexity. At best, researchers agree, the apes have exhibited the linguistic competence of very young children; but most anticipate more substantial achievements with additional time and the development of better training techniques.
Wir haben schon in den Kapiteln 3 und 62–64 über Möglichkeiten der Artentstehung gesprochen. Abschließend greifen wir dieses Thema noch einmal auf und wollen versuchen, die Entstehung einer Art — die Abstammung des Menschen — zu diskutieren.
In this chapter, I discuss largely, though by no means exclusively, Far Eastern literacy. (The Far East will be henceforth referred to simply as “the East.”) And I tend to minimize the relations among literacy, brain, cognition, and culture. Literacy is simply obtaining sound and meaning from printed language; as such, literacy by itself may not have a great influence on cognition and culture. Literacy may have greater influence on cognition and culture, if it serves as “the magic key that unlocks the door to the wonderland of stories and information.” And, as I will argue, cortical activities are similar whether one reads in an Eastern or Western script.
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