Non-human Animal Language, Evolution, and Brain (PSY 336)
Units 10 and 11 of the course deal with non-human animal language and the evolution of language (e.g., are there neurological underpinnings specifically for language?) and wrap up our coverage of the psychology of language.
Are human beings alone in the animal kingdom as the sole possessors of language? Is it necessary for human beings to be unique in this way? Is the study of language in nonhuman populations the struggle for something outside of the scientific method?
Please comment on the most recent presentations and readings for Pinker (1994; Chapter 11), as well as any optional readings you tackled (Gardner & Gardner, 1969; Savage-Rumbaugh, McDonald, Sevcik, Hopkins, & Rubert, 1986), and the footage we have seen of Schroeder’s (1978/2006) Koko: A talking gorilla. Please then consider the following:
What are the biological and evolutionary arguments for the innateness of language? That the brain is involved in the production and comprehension of language is obvious, but how does this fact inform us about language ‘as special’ for human beings?
Please comment on Pinker (1994; Chapter 10) and Martin, Wiggs, Ungerleider, & Haxby (1996), which will be presented on Friday, as well as Pinker (Chapter 8), which will also be presented on Friday. Your blog assignment is due on Friday June 5th by 5pm.
As we end our coverage, what is the big picture? What is language? How is it learned? Who and what possesses it? Importantly, what is entailed by how we answer these questions (e.g., whether human beings have a unique place in the world) has much to do with how you answer questions about language and mind.
I genuinely hope you have enjoyed the course and learned a lot. You certainly have been exposed to a lot! But I believe firmly that you deserve that: to be presented with a wide variety of viewpoints, methodologies, and topics so that you can make up your own mind. Having one textbook or one constant lecturer takes away from the mysteries that drive a field forward. That’s why I like to present contradictory positions in this course, sometimes in the same unit. Tension is good, though it may not feel alright in the beginning. It is certainly easier to present an easily digestible, uncontroversial story, but that’s not reality in any discipline. Progress comes through trying to resolve differences in perspective. I wouldn’t be entirely comfortable if you walk out of this class feeling that the field of psychology of language has been decided. I hope you walk out interested in a few things here or there and willing to pursue the matter further on your own. (I’m always there if you ever need an article. I have many many PDFs and photocopies.) I hope that you see opportunities for further debate and contributions in psychology of language and that you might join. My passion is language. My views have changed over the years because I have kept reading and exposed myself to different perspectives. I now study aspects quite different than those with which I started off, but I have always found the field thought-provoking. Defining language and delimiting its possessers, one of our first assignments, is an ongoing task inasmuch as it is fundamentally the existential task of defining what makes us the way we are.
Pinker (1994; Chapter 11) poses an interesting stance on language as a development for the survival of our species. I imagine back to the Ice Age, a difficult time for any species. I have always wondered how humanity survived that catastrophe and I imagine that language was designed to help humans survive in those conditions. They did not have thick hides or amazing strength for hunting, but they had the ability to communicate with eachother complex thought (or however complex a thought could be at that time). The true meat of Chapter 11 however is Pinker’s debate against the language acquisition in chimps. He complains about the chimps inability to grasp grammer and feels as though the animals are merely learning responses, not language. Jane Goodall, renowned chimpanzee expert, had a good line in the text saying that many of Nim Chimpsky’s learned ASL signs were simply recalled movements from wild chimpanzee’s that she had seen. This supports the idea that Nim was not being taught language, but then it has be be discussed as to whether or not the language chimps have with eachother that Nim modeled her signs from. Do these signs loosely fit with the three critera for human language?
The video on Koko showed how the chimp could combine words like cookie rock to represent danish, as also written in Chapter 11. The video started off interesting, but even without Dr. Ramey’s discussion on the video and spekticism I would have had some problems. Later on in the film Koko seems to simply be trying out different sings to see which one works for a treat. Birds and dogs can be trained to have distinct reactions depending on word clues so I would have no problem believing that is what was happening with Koko. There were also times when Koko would simply stumble with her hands and the interpreter would say “Oh look she said (insert word here).” I consider this to be similar to the “babbling” mentioned in the Gardner and Gardner (1969) paper about trying to teach language to the chimpanzee Washoe. If I were to believe that chimpanzees were speaking through sign language I would want them to initiate conversation and do it relatively well rather than poorly repeat the gestures of someone that will feed them.
I will comment on Pinker Ch. 8, Ch. 10, and Martin, Wiggs, Ungerleider, & Haxby (1996) later when I have the time to read them.
Alexander Schickling, PSY 336
After reading the Martin et al. paper that centered on neurological impacts of language, it was interesting to read research of how different regions of the brain are impacted by the language that we hear or speak ourselves. I thought it was really interesting that the brain is able to differentiate between words that have no reasoning to them, like animals, and words that a function is able to go with them, like a tool. It seems that the brain can recognize tools instead of animals more easily because the tools have multiple aspects to them. When hearing the name of a tool, the brain has to compartmentalize the name of the tool and then has to be able to understand the function of the tool as well. Humans might be the only being that is able to use its brain in two ways when hearing or seeing a word. Everything that is done with chimps and trying to teach them language and how to sign, it seems that they will never be able to do what humans do and say a word and then understand the function of the word.
Chimps, being so close to humans in many aspects, it would seem that they would have some ability to be able to learn language and be able to speak to us in some manner. I just do not feel that language is innate for chimps the way that it is for humans. Chimps and other animals have innate language, but it is very different from humans and I do not think the language of animals will ever be the same as language of humans. Animals have a language that consists of mating calls, calls for their young, and territorial language. They however do not use language to communicate ideas to one another like we as humans do. To me it seems that scientists want to believe that chimps and gorillas have the ability to speak like humans and to gain the language that humans have. The research done with Koko the gorilla I think was good in theory but I do not think that Koko was ever really able to speak and understand the way that humans do. I am really skeptical to the idea that she actually knew what was being said to her. Of course if you say to a chimp are you hungry, they might make a sign with their hands to get food. Every animal it seems would respond when someone looks at them and goes “are you hungry?” I just find it skeptical that we as humans would be able to teach non-humans such a complex thing as our language and get them to really learn and really understand what is being said or what is being heard.
Sarah Galante PSY 336
I apologize in advance because this post ties in reading materials that were not assigned for the class!
In another, completely unrelated course I’m taking, there was a brief discussion about the development of language from a Marxist perspective. Marx argued that man, upon realizing his consciousness and meeting his basic needs, will search for better ways to meet these needs, thus creating new needs. It’s only through cooperation that this development of the satisfaction of needs can occur, and it is through language that cooperation can occur in a more effective and organized manner. All people have to contend with the forces of nature and find ways to manipulate them to their advantage, but human beings are not developed to deal directly with them because their physical characteristics do not include the evolutionary adaptations like fur or wings or claws. In lieu of these things, humans need to cooperate in their efforts to control and adapt to nature, an effort which, as it gets more complicated, requires more advanced forms of communication (i.e. language).
The ideas presented by Pinker in chapter 11 seem to agree somewhat with these Marxist ideas. Pinker, however, seems to focus more on the natural selection that occurred after the ability to produce language developed. While I, regardless of the craftsmanship of my spear, would probably have been crushed under the feet of a wholly monmouth in a solitary version of one of our ancestral early man’s hunting expeditions, the use of language and communication would allow a small hunting party of my best caveman friends to swiftly kill the giant beast. Without this evolutionary advance, our limited access to resources, in Marxist terms, would have probably have led us to die off in a few generations. Pinker agrees that the development of language was absolutely a response to man’s inability to adapt to nature by himself. It becomes more interesting when you consider the further development of language and whether it was the result of an evolutionarily developed innate syntax or if it’s the product of more and more complicated needs and the subsequent complication, through social changes, of the language used to express them. Maybe the syntax that developed is the result of cultural change that affected an evolutionarily acquired language ability. While Marx never directly addresses the question of Darwinism and the development of syntax, his emphasis on the social aspects of reliance and cooperation as driving forces in the development of language suggest a social theory that stands in stark contrast to Pinker’s evolutionary theory of syntax.
The acquisition of limited forms of animals lends some support to the notion that language is an evolutionary response to the human condition. Chimpanzees, like Koko, have no natural need for advanced forms of language because the limited communication between them is enough for survival and continuation of the species. As Koko is taught language, it seems to be a response to the chimp’s present situation; it says I want food when food is presented because it has to eat and therefore will do what it has to to get what it wants. Chimpanzees seem to have no natural (advanced?) language ability because they have virtually no need for it; they’re well adapted for life in the wild and they may not be as reliant on social interaction and cooperation as humans are. Both Marx and Pinker would likely agree that chimpanzees, while competent at the command-and-answer form of language, cannot develop the complicated syntactical structures of human language because their needs are simple (Marx) and their ancestors got on fine without having to talk to one another (Pinker).
Justin Bradley, PSY 336
After reading most of this material, and importantly after reading contradicting articles and views on language differences between humans and nonhumans, I have decided, at least for now, that I believe as humans we are absolutely unique and set apart from any other being because of language. Communication is in every living thing, from animals to plants, all things that live communicate, a lot of times in order to keep living. We as humans, are absolutely unique with the ability of infinite language and language that involves syntax. For probably the first time while reading Pinker, I actually agree with his stance. This is in Chapter 11 where he discusses humans uniqueness from nonhumans because of language. Even through reading the other articles and studies, I believe this same separation can be seen. What you see in the studies of nonhumans having language is chimps and gorillas being taught “language” that only becomes a learned behavior or really just another “trick”.
Another thing that reading this material on teaching chimps language proved to me was that language is indeed innate. Chimps, being very closely related to us, especially the bonobo, share many similar characteristics with us. Many of these characteristics are innate, such as the way they mate, social interaction, even in some ways, physically how they look. Then as we come to language, there becomes a blockade that has not been broken, and in my opinion I do not believe will be. Language separates us from nonhumans and honestly, even though its does not outright disprove evolution, it is something to think about that we may be set apart because a designer, God even, has created us that way. What does everyone else feel about that?
David DiLorenzo Psy 336
The readings and video from the last couple of units help to put human language in perspective. As much as we would like to attribute characteristics of human language and communication to non-human species, we pretty much stand alone as far as language goes. Chapter 11 of Pinker (1994) puts this argument into perspective as he compares the uniqueness of human language to an elephant’s trunk. While there are “cousins” of the elephant (known as hyraxes) which share a large genetic similarity, we should not think that these creatures are somehow less evolved because they do not possess a trunk. In the same way, when we study the communication style of chimpanzees, we should not as think of these animals as having a “less evolved form of language” as Pinker says , but rather a form of communication unique to the species. Another example of this distinction was observable in the “Koko” video viewed in class. Although Kokos’s learned abilities should not be trivialized, they were in large part a mirroring of her trainer Penny. As mentioned in postings by other members of the class, it is suggested that a lot of the signs (such as pointing) that were apparently “acquired” were in fact normal gestures used in the natural habitats of the primates. Koko, as well as the chimpanzees in other studies, did not use their new found “language” to spontaneously communicate ideas and feelings, but nearly exclusively when they worked or interacted with their trainers. Also, as most anyone who has ever owned a pet knows, when you spend an incredible amount of time with an animal you tend to view the pets behaviors in a human context. The fact that Koko and some of the chimpanzees lived with their trainers is a testament to the ability and commitment of the trainers, yet eliminates their objective views as scientists or behaviorists.
Aliza Murray, PSY 336
The biological argument for the innateness of language is that the brain is our main source of the production of language. All human have the same brain, and according to research, the same area of our brains light up on a PET scan when shown the same object. Therefore, language must be innate because all of our brains interpret language using similar processes. The evolutionary argument for the innateness of language is that all humans develop language in the same way; therefore, humans must have had a common ancestor through which language came about. Humans are the only animals which such developed brains, so I would say that humans are unique in their ability to use language.
Koko, although a very intelligent gorilla, still does not change my mind about humans being the only animals that can use language. She was not born with an innate ability for language, and still cannot initiate conversations. Also, acquiring sign language for Koko just means that she has the ability to memorize certain shapes. Also, these studies with animals are not always 100% accurate because trainers themselves want to believe that their chimpanzee has leaned language. However, many times the fact is that the chimpanzee is learning through behavior therapy, not an innate language instinct.
Mina Ramchand, Psy 336