Communication in vervet monkeys

1. Communication vs Language Communication in vervet monkeys

2. Communication vs Language • Communication: An intended transfer of information from one organism to another. • Whatever language is it is at least a form of communication. • Non linguistic communication can be described as fitting into two basic categories • Innate transmissions & meanings • Pheromones vervet alarm calls • Associative (S-R) transmissions & meanings • “polly want a cracker” (make this set of sounds get reward). • Language: a system of communication or reasoning using representation along with metaphor and some manner of logical grammar, all of which presuppose a historical and at least temporarily transcendent standard or truth from which it is derived. • Representation: an icon or abstraction that holds meaning (e.g. words or symbols) • Metaphor: a comparison made between two seemingly unrelated subjects (e.g. an analogy) • logical grammar: a set of rules by which words or symbols are organized to depict a specific communication or meaning from the transmitter to the reciever. • temporarily transcendent standard: the idea that a novel idea can be communicated as an emergent function of the specific set of words or symbols within a specific environmental/cultural context. That is language has an open architecture

3. Are we alone? Studies of language ability in non human primates "For it is a very remarkable thing that there are no men, not even the insane, so dull and stupid that they cannot put words together in a manner to convey their thoughts. On the contrary, there is no other animal however perfect and fortunately situated it may be, that can do the same… even those men born deaf and dumb, lacking the organs which others make use of in speaking, and at least as badly off as the animals in this respect, usually invent for themselves some signs by which they make themselves understood" (Philosopher Descartes 1637). • Garner 1896 • Was convinced apes possess some language • Made the first attempt to teach a chimp to speak • The chimp learned to speak the word “fue” • Witmer 1909 • Mama, papa, cup, the sounds “pa” & “the” • Other failed attempts Kellogg’s (1933); Hayes’s (1951). • The problem: non human apes can not speak because they do not possess the proper bio-mechanical machinery to produce speech.

4. Are we alone? Studies of language ability in non human primates Robert Yerkes (1925) Suggested that apes “have plenty to talk about, but no gift for the use of sounds…. Perhaps they can be taught to use their fingers, somewhat as a deaf or dumb person” • The Gardner's (1971) • Trained Washoe some 132 ASL hand signs over the course of 4 years. • Assessment based on spontaneous production of each sign daily of a 15 consecutive day period. • Claimed that she produced semantically appropriate combinations of signs • “You me hide.” • “You no go out there hurry.” • “Water bird” • Subsequent to the Washoe experiments three others have successfully trained ASL • Fouts (more chimps) • Patterson (Koko) • Terrace (Nim Chimpsky)

5. Nim chimpsky: 21 November 1973 - 10 March 2000 300 signs, and made 2-, 3-, and 4-sign combinations • Differences between human child and chimp linguistic behavior: • Nim’s semantic complexity not correlated with sentence length. • Nim’s utterances were infested with “wild card” repetitions (e.g. “give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you”) • Nim could not take turns speaking • Meta analysis of ape signing reveals that ~90% of all signs made by chimps had been previously made by a trainer. • Terrace concluded that: • No grammatical competence: apes use “canned” sentence structure that was provided by trainers. • No representational competence: apes are largely imitating their trainers based on S-R reward structures

6. Symbolic language experiments • Premack (Sarah) and the Rumbaugh’s (Kanzi) • Premack: • Used chips of varying size shape and color • Results largely could not address the issues of semantic complexity or representation • Rumbaugh: The Yerkish language

7. Symbolic language experiments Evidence of representational competence