p511.
It has been found that chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans can represent
words and communicate with one another.
Chantek, an orangutan, was trained to use sign language. Chantek learned 140 signs, and made some up himself.
p512
Orangutan abilities have been historically underestimated.
Chantek was raised with a human culture, and taught signs from American Sign Language. The signs were given in english word order, or pidgin Sign English.
p513
Chantek was not exposed to speech for the first several years, but
then was.
Chantek was first taught signs by molding, but later by imitation.
Signs were considered an active part of the vocabulary when he used
them spontaneously and appropriately on half the days of a given month.
Most signs (127) reached this level. This was a compromise between the
liberal Terrace et al. (1979) spont. use on 5 consecutive days and the
conservative Gardner and Gardner (1969) spont. and appropriate use on 15
consecutive days.
Ý
p514
The first signs occurred after one month of enculturation: "food eat"
and "drink".
p515
During the study period, he used 1/3 to 1/2 of his signs every day.
p516
Only 22.7% of his signs were to try to get food and drink.
p517
Signs Chantek knew:
objects:
Foods:
food-eat
nut
candy
banana
raisin
bread
apple
cracker
orange
cereal
ice cream
berry
peach
cheese
meat
corn
butter
yogurt
grape
carrot
cookie
chocolate
jello
egg
Names:
Chantek
Ann
Lyn
Kim
John
Jackie
Richard
Michael
Ray
Rick
Dave
Jeannie
Animals:
dog
cat
monkey
bird
alligator
bug
squirrel
elephant
ape
horse
Drinks:
drink
milk
coke
coffee
water
tea
colors:
orange
red
black
white
green
locatives:
up
point
out
in
down
Other attributes:
dirty
good
bad
hurt
Emphasizers/reoccurrences
more
Hurry
time
Places:
Cadek-Hall
Brock-Hall
yard
Pronouns:
me
you
p516
Like children, Chantek prefers to use a name rather than a pronoun, as the reference is fixed-- even when talking to that person.
p518
Conversations muset have little imitation and lots of spontinaity.
for example, at 26 months, for Nim (A chimp in another research lab)
and Chantek:
| Nim | Chantek | |
| imitation rate | 38% | 3% |
| spontinaity rate | 4% | 49-88% |
| interrputions of caregiver | 35% | 8% |
| interruptions of ape | ~18% | 9% |
p519
Chantel had some interesting grammar. When the object referred to was present, then the form that of an utterance would be object-GIVE, but when the object was not present, then the form would be GIVE-object.
524
Representations must have at least these things:
The Protodeclarative Stage (has 4 substages)
Chantek began to use attributes: "Red bird" and "white
cheese food eat."
You can find out what an ape means when a sign is used
by looking at the context in which the sign was used.
Results of studies of this sort show that most of Chantek's
signs came to mean the normal adult meanings.
Chantek overgeneralized in interesting ways, too. For
example, he used the sign "lyn" for all caregivers, but never to strangers.
p527
Chantek used to use the word "dirty" to refer to bad things, until he learned the word for bad. Then he started using bad, and dirty changed its meaning to be more like the real meaning.
p528
He used "open" to mean moving large objects. There
are several other examples of overgeneralization.
Referring to things that are not present is called "displacement."
Chantek did this often. At 8 years of age, 38% of his signings showed displacement.
p529. Deception is also an important part of language development. Chantek made about three deceptions per week. There are some interesting examples in the paper.
p530. Though he wasn't taught to do it, sometimes Chantek would sign with his feet. This is evidence for a mental representation of an image of signs. Chantek had a strong left hand bias in signing.
p531. Chantek's freestyle drawings resembled those of a three year old.
p532. Chantek was given a series of cognitive tests. On one of them, at age 4.5 he scored like an 18-24 month old human.
p533: Language tests such as Miller's suggest that Chantek
had entered Piaget's sensorimotor stage. There is some evidence
that he entered the preoperational stage.