1 / 22

Nature vs nurture

Savage- Rumbaugh et al. (1986) Spontaneous symbol acquisition and communicative use by pygmy chimpanzees. Nature vs nurture. Do you think that children learn to communicate purely through imitation and reinforcement by adults?

josie
Download Presentation

Nature vs nurture

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Savage-Rumbaugh et al. (1986)Spontaneous symbol acquisitionand communicative useby pygmy chimpanzees

  2. Nature vs nurture • Do you think that children learn to communicate purely through imitation and reinforcement by adults? • Do you think that as humans we have the ability to use language hard wired into our brains? • How would you explain the “wolf boy”? • You tube clip of wolf boy...

  3. What they wanted to do: • Savage wanted to look at if animals could use language in the same way as humans. • If this was proven what implications would this hold for us?

  4. Previous research • Washoe was a wild – caught female chimpanzee who was around 8 – 14 months old at the start of the study. • She was trained to use American sign language. • Washoe was trained using behaviourist techniques using imitation and reinforcement (she was tickled when she correctly used a sign) • After 22 months she had used 20 signs and continued to add signs for many years. • She was able to make short word combinations. • YOU TUBE CLIP...

  5. Aim of savage To study the language acquisition of two pygmy Chimpanzees, Kanzi and Mulika compared to two common chimpanzees, Austin and Sherman.

  6. Why use pygmy chimps? • Prior to this study this type of chimp had not been used before as they are rare. • They appear to be one of the most intelligent species of chimps. • Socially they are different from other species as the males and females become exceptionally close, males partake in infant care and they share food. Also eye contact, gestures and vocalisations are more frequent.

  7. method • Longitudinal study • The data was gathered over ten years and the study looks at a 17 month period. • The researches claim that the study was not intended to be a experiment but as much of the data is presented in form of a comparison between the two species of chimp (pygmy and common) it ended up being a quasi – experiment as the IV was naturally occurring. • The DV was the language acquisition.

  8. Subjects • The main subject was Kanzi a pygmy chimpanzee who was born in captivity. Also there was Mulika who was Kanzi’s sister. • He was reared in a language environment with humans from 6 months old and at 2 ½ years he was seen to have spontaneously started using symbols which led to the researchers beginning their formal observation of him.

  9. Procedure • The main medium of communication used with all the animals was a visual symbol system. • This board showed symbols and lit up when touched by the subject Kanzi’z keyboard was also connected to a speech synthesiser so that words were spoken when he touched the symbols on the board. • This was used because apes cannot “speak” in that they cannot produce human like vocalisations.

  10. Procedure • When outdoors Kanzi and Mulika used a ‘pointing board’, a thin panel containing photos of the lexigrams. • Austin and Sherman did not use these boards as their broad hand gestures made it difficult to distinguish which symbol they were selecting • Spoken English was used along side the lexigram communications and gestures were used with all subjects. The experiments also used approximately 100 American Sign Language gestures.

  11. Rearing environments • Kanzi and Mulika’s rearing environment was similar to that of Sherman and Austin. • They were all with people who used to visual system around them throughout the day. • However there were some differences:

  12. Rearing environments • Sherman and Austin were in a training environment, whereas Kanzi and Mulika were in a observational setting. • Sherman and Austins Keyboard did not have a speech synthesiser because tests revealed they did not understand spoken English. • Sherman and Austin did not used a keyboard outside of the lab.

  13. Rearing environments • Apart from these differences all other aspects of the rearing environment were similar, including: • Attachment to caretakers • Opportunity to interact with and observe people • Exposure to human speech • Exposure to gestures, photos, formal tests and to watch TV etc.

  14. Rearing environments • No formal training was ever attempted with Kanzi and Mulika. Instead the caretakers used the lexigrams and vocalised the symbols throughout each day with the chimps. • For example when a caretaker was tickling Kanzi they would comment vocally and by using the keyboard ‘teacher tickle Kanzi’. • Sometimes Kanzi and Mulika would observe the keyboard and other times they would ignore it. In this way they were observing rather than being trained.

  15. Data recording • From Kanzi’s first use of the Lexigram at the age of 2 ½ years, a complete record was kept of all his utterances for 17 months, the same was kept for Mulika from 11 – 21 months.

  16. Data recording Each utterance was classified as it occurred:

  17. Vocabulary acquisition criteria Two criteria had to be met before a word could be included in Kanzi and Mulika’s vocab. • Symbol production should appear to be appropriate. • The word should occur spontaneously on 9 out of 10 occasions. • Followed by demonstration of concordance on 9 of 10 additional occurrences. (Concordance is referred to the use of the word which is then backed up by a behavioural confirmation, e.g. if Kanzi requested a trip to the tree house he would be told yes, he then had to lead them to the correct location of the tree house for it to be confirmed in his vocab.

  18. Controls • An analysis was done of 4.5 hours of videotape in which the use of utterances were scored independently by two different observers. • Why do you think this was done? • What does it help to prevent?

  19. Controls • There was a 100% agreement over which lexigramsKanzi used and whether or not they were used correctly in context. • However 9 utterances were noted on the videotape that were not noticed by the caretakers during recording.

  20. Tests! • Kanzi and Mulika were also tested in everyday situations. An example of this would be if Kanzi had scattered a number of objects on the floor he would be asked to pick them up in a certain order. If he failed to do these tasks he would be shown what to do. These tasks were not associated with rewards. • What do you think could influence the results of these tests?

  21. Tests! • To prevent possible influences from the experimenters such as cues blind tests were carried out when the experimenter had no prior knowledge of the presentation of the stimuli. • Austin and Sherman were tested in similar ways. • You tube clip of Kanzi been tested...

More Related