An Explanation of the Language of a Chimpanzee

Thompson, Claudia R.; Church, Russell M.

doi:10.1126/science.7367862

Cited by 89 publications

(28 citation statements)

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“…Finally, Thompson and Church (1980) presented an analysis of the language-like behavior of Lana Chimpanzee, which may be relevant to the present paradigm. Lana Chimpanzee (Rumbaugh, 1977) learned to select a string of symbols depending on the conditional cues present in the environment.…”

Section: Amentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, the work with Lana provided the impetus for the present work. The Thompson and Church (1980) analysis ascribed Lana's selection of a stock sentence (stimulus string) to conditional discrimination learning, while paired associative learning was responsible for the selection of the appropriate lexigram to represent an incentive in the stock sentence. This analysis would work equally well for the behavior observed in the present study.…”

Section: Amentioning

confidence: 99%

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Stimulus stringing by pigeons: Conditional strings

Richardson

Kresch

1983

Animal Learning & Behavior

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Pigeons were trained to produce one serial list in the presence of a green background cue and another serial list in the presence of a red background cue when the items for both serial lists were presented on each trial. This demonstrated a combination of serial learning and conditional discrimination learning not previously shown in pigeons. Specifically, when presented with four geometric forms, ABC D, in random locations of a five-key display, the pigeons learned to peck ABC when the background was green and A B D when the background was red. Accuracy on the conditional string ranged from 73% to 85%. Transfer tests using different locations of the stimuli on the keys showed positive transfer, thus ruling out learning of specific locations as the basis of the accurate performance. Above-chance performance was maintained when the conditional colors were presented only on the key that did not contain one of the serial stimuli. The results are interpreted in terms of a chaining model that postulates that the sequential selections were controlled by cues produced by both onset of the trial and prior selections within the trial.Serial learning has long been a research topic, especially in the literature on humans. Currently, there are a number of paradigms being used to study serial learning in lower animals. Sands and Wright (1980) have demonstrated that rhesus monkeys have a remarkable capacity to learn a long serial list. Capaldi's theory of partial reinforcement has been extended to the learning of monotonic and nonmonotonic series of quantities of food rewards (Capaldi, Verry, & Davidson, 1980). Hulse (1978) has also carried out extensive studies of serial pattern learning for series of food quantities. Studies of spatial memory in the radial arm maze (Olton, 1978) can also be viewed as using a serial task.The pervasiveness of serial behavior means that each organism generally engages in different behavior sequences at different times. The particular sequence active at a given time would presumably be due to some stimulus, either discriminative or eliciting, that controls the behavioral sequence. However, the paradigms used to study serial behavior generally involve only one such sequence for a given subject. When different sequences are studied, they are usually given to different groups of animals.The present study extends a paradigm used in our laboratory to study single sequences in pigeons (Richardson &: Bittner, 1982 1981) to the study of performance by individual organisms on two different sequences. In our earlier work, the serial items were colors projected on response keys. Each color was assigned to a serial position in the stimulus string (sequence). If we called the first color A, the second color B, etc., then the task required the subject to peck ABC D in that order in the four-stimulus string condition. The location of the colors on the keys was varied randomly from one correct trial to the next, and a between-trials correction procedure was used to insure that the subject learned each array. C...

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Section: Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Stimulus stringing by pigeons: Conditional strings

Richardson

Kresch

1983

Animal Learning & Behavior

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“…Phrases were transposed, both correctly and incorrectly, and were combined to convey different meanings. Thus, it was concluded that Lana's productions require a more complex model than the simple discrimination learning model suggested by Thompson and Church (1980).Recently, Thompson and Church (1980) argued that at least one data block of the language-like behavior of Lana chimpanzee (Rumbaugh, 1977) could be explained, for the most part, in terms of conditional discriminations and paired-associate learning. A discrimination among six "stock" sentences and a choice of an appropriate lexigram as the paired associate of something in Lana's environment accounted for 91070 of her sentences when the experimenter was present and 66% of her sentences when the experimenter was absent.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, Thompson and Church (1980) argued that at least one data block of the language-like behavior of Lana chimpanzee (Rumbaugh, 1977) could be explained, for the most part, in terms of conditional discriminations and paired-associate learning. A discrimination among six "stock" sentences and a choice of an appropriate lexigram as the paired associate of something in Lana's environment accounted for 91070 of her sentences when the experimenter was present and 66% of her sentences when the experimenter was absent.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The language-like behavior of Lana chimpanzee: Is it merely discrimination and paired-associate learning?

Pate

Rumbaugh

1983

Animal Learning & Behavior

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The productions of Lana chimpanzee during an experiment that lasted 26 days were analyzed from a "stock sentence" approach and from a phrase-structure approach. In answering questions posed by the experimenter and in making requests, Lana's productions seemed to be best explained in the phrase-structure approach, in which phrases, rather than individuallexigrams, served as lexical units. Phrases were transposed, both correctly and incorrectly, and were combined to convey different meanings. Thus, it was concluded that Lana's productions require a more complex model than the simple discrimination learning model suggested by Thompson and Church (1980).Recently, Thompson and Church (1980) argued that at least one data block of the language-like behavior of Lana chimpanzee (Rumbaugh, 1977) could be explained, for the most part, in terms of conditional discriminations and paired-associate learning. A discrimination among six "stock" sentences and a choice of an appropriate lexigram as the paired associate of something in Lana's environment accounted for 91070 of her sentences when the experimenter was present and 66% of her sentences when the experimenter was absent. Obviously; if all of Lana's productions can be explained in this rather simple way, language-like behavior remains just that, language-like behavior.Since Lana was trained to use the system by being taught "stock" sentences, it is not surprising that much of her early behavior in the language-learning project can be accounted for in this way. These "stock" sentences, which Lana had been taught explicitly, serve as frames into which other units (lexigrams in this case) can be placed. But the number of "stock" sentences is of some importance in that if the number necessary to account for her behavior is very large, then the idea of a "stock" sentence loses its value; that is, if the number of frames becomes excessively large, it can be argued that the "stock"

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