Ape Language: From Conditioned Response to Symbol

Savage‐Rumbaugh, E. Sue

doi:10.1037/e503612011-001

Cited by 289 publications

(310 citation statements)

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“…Referential pointing has also been observed in all the other great ape species, including bonobos (Savage-Rumbaugh, 1984, 1986, gorillas (Patterson, 1978), and orangutans Miles, 1990). However, although pointing in language-naive chimpanzees has been incidentally reported in previous studies, no systematic observations of referential pointing per se have been reported in language-naive chimpanzees without overt training to point.…”

mentioning

confidence: 84%

Indexical and referential pointing in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Leavens

Hopkins

Bard³

1996

Journal of Comparative Psychology

205

215

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The spontaneous index finger and other referential pointing in 3 adult, laboratory chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) who have not received language training is reported. Of 256 total observed points, 254 were emitted in the presence of a human to objects in the environment; therefore, the points were communicative. Indicators of intentional communication used by the subjects included attention-getting behaviors, gaze alternation, and persistence until reward. Thus, pointing by these chimpanzees was intentionally communicative. These data imply that perspective-taking and referential communication are generalized hominoid traits, given appropriate eliciting contexts. Index finger pointing was more frequent with the subjects' dominant hands. This study refutes claims that indexical or referential pointing is species-unique to humans or dependent on linguistic competence or explicit training.This study was initiated when a chimpanzee began to regularly point to accidentally dropped food items outside his home cage and beyond his reach in the presence of an experimenter. We sought to determine if this pointing behavior could be defined as intentional communication, and not simple reaching, by comparing the pointing behavior of this subject and two cagemates with pointing and intentional communication in human infants.The production and comprehension of referential pointing in preverbal humans have been increasingly studied in recent decades with respect to their significance for the attribution of intentionality in preverbal children

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mentioning

confidence: 84%

Indexical and referential pointing in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Leavens

Hopkins

Bard³

1996

Journal of Comparative Psychology

205

215

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“…However, unlike the case for chimpanzees and children, providing macaque monkeys with concrete tokens or conditional cues to represent analogical relations between relations apparently does not catalyze their ability to make categorical analogical equivalence judgments instantiated by only pairs of like and unlike items (see also, for example, Kuczaj & Hendry, 2003;Savage-Rumbaugh, 1986;Thompson & Oden, 1993). The root of this capacity may be the ability of both chimpanzees and children, but, thus far, not monkeys, to tacitly detect relations between relations instantiated by pairs of items spontaneously and early in life.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concept Learning in Animals

Zentall¹,

Wasserman²,

Lazareva³

et al. 2008

CCBR

161

141

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Generally speaking, the study of concepts in cognitive psychology is anthropocentric with respect to both content and theory. A broader comparative perspective on the various forms of concept learning not only provides a more inclusive view of conceptual behavior, but it also provides a more objective perspective from which to identify underlying processes. We suggest that several of the major varieties of conceptual classes claimed to be uniquely human are also exhibited by nonhuman animals. We present evidence for the formation of several sorts of conceptual stimulus classes by nonhuman animals: perceptual classes involving classification according to the shared attributes of objects, associative classes or functional equivalences in which stimuli form a class based on common associations, relational classes, in which the conceptual relationship between or among stimuli defines the class, and relations between relations, in which the conceptual (analogical) relationship is defined by the relation between classes of stimuli. We conclude that not only are nonhuman animals capable of acquiring a wide variety of concepts, but that the underlying processes that determine concept learning are also likely to be quite similar.

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“…Apes given training with gestural or keyboard based communication systems learn to use them to provide answers to questions in return for rewards (food, tickling, etc. ; see Pepperberg, 2016;Savage-Rumbaugh, 1986;SavageRumbaugh et al, 1993). However, they very rarely use these systems to volunteer information themselves, except for requests (typically for food or tickling!).…”

Section: Semantic and Pragmatic Components Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Empirical approaches to the study of language evolution

2017

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The study of language evolution, and human cognitive evolution more generally, has often been ridiculed as unscientific, but in fact it differs little from many other disciplines that investigate past events, such as geology or cosmology. Well-crafted models of language evolution make numerous testable hypotheses, and if the principles of strong inference (simultaneous testing of multiple plausible hypotheses) are adopted, there is an increasing amount of relevant data allowing empirical evaluation of such models. The articles in this special issue provide a concise overview of current models of language evolution, emphasizing the testable predictions that they make, along with overviews of the many sources of data available to test them (emphasizing comparative, neural, and genetic data). The key challenge facing the study of language evolution is not a lack of data, but rather a weak commitment to hypothesistesting approaches and strong inference, exacerbated by the broad and highly interdisciplinary nature of the relevant data. This introduction offers an overview of the field, and a summary of what needed to evolve to provide our species with language-ready brains. It then briefly discusses different contemporary models of language evolution, followed by an overview of different sources of data to test these models. I conclude with my own multistage model of how different components of language could have evolved.

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Ape Language: From Conditioned Response to Symbol

Cited by 289 publications

References 0 publications

Indexical and referential pointing in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Indexical and referential pointing in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Concept Learning in Animals

Empirical approaches to the study of language evolution

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