The communicative functions of five signing chimpanzees (<i>Pan troglodytes</i>)

Leeds, Charles Austin; Jensvold, Mary Lee

doi:10.1075/pc.21.1.10lee

Cited by 3 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 38 publications

(83 reference statements)

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“…As adults at the CHCI, the chimpanzees continued to sign spontaneously and interactively about activities, meals, games, and events with each other as well as with human familiars [4][5][6]20,24,25]. They had daily access to picture books, toys, clothing, and other objects, many of which were part of their lives in the cross-fostering environment and promoted natural chimpanzee behaviors such as problem solving, fine motor movement, and foraging.…”

Section: Methods 21 Chimpanzee Biographical Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…), body orientation, physical location in the facility, eye gaze, vocalizations, arousal, and any other nonverbal behaviors. Last, they contained a written narrative description of the interaction [6,20]. There was a constant stream of signed interactions between Tatu and Loulis and their caregivers, so interactions of the type recorded in sign logs were ubiquitous in daily life at the sanctuary.…”

Section: Sign Checklists and Logsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Leeds and Jensvold [6] categorized communicative functions in 1057 utterances of Tatu, Loulis, Washoe, Moja, and Dar recorded from 2000 to 2003 during unstructured interactions with each other and caregivers. They categorized utterances using seven categories and subcategories adapted from Dore [37,38].…”

Section: Study 2 Communicative Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The data in that study were recorded at CHCI where as stated all of the caregivers were proficient in ASL. The objective of Study 2 was to replicate the method of Leeds and Jensvold [6] and investigate the communicative functions of Tatu's and Loulis's utterances in the new linguistic environment at the Fauna Foundation. Note: S = Speaker, R = Receiver, P = Proposition.…”

Section: Study 2 Communicative Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Chimpanzees in sign language studies were immersed in a sign language environment [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. All the humans and chimpanzees in these studies used American Sign Language (ASL) in interactions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sign Language Studies with Chimpanzees in Sanctuary

Jensvold,

Dombrausky,

Collins

2023

Animals

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Adult chimpanzees Tatu and Loulis lived at the Fauna Foundation sanctuary. They had acquired signs of American Sign Language (ASL) while young and continued to use them as adults. Caregivers with proficiency in ASL maintained daily sign language records during interactions and passive observation. Sign checklists were records of daily vocabulary use. Sign logs were records of signed interactions with caregivers and other chimpanzees. This study reports sign use from eight years of these records. Tatu and Loulis used a majority of their base vocabularies consistently over the study period. They used signs that they had acquired decades earlier and new signs. Their utterances served a variety of communicative functions, including responses, conversational devices, requests, and descriptions. They signed to caregivers, other chimpanzees, including those who did not use signs, and to themselves privately. This indicates the importance of a stimulating and interactive environment to understand the scope of ape communication and, in particular, their use of sign language.

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Section: Methods 21 Chimpanzee Biographical Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sign Checklists and Logsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study 2 Communicative Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study 2 Communicative Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sign Language Studies with Chimpanzees in Sanctuary

Jensvold,

Dombrausky,

Collins

2023

Animals

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Chimpanzees coordinate interrogative markers to ask questions

Dombrausky,

Jensvold,

Shaw

et al. 2023

GEST

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Questions serve to initiate and continue conversation as well as to gain information and introduce new topics. In signed languages a question can be signaled by modifying the content of an utterance or by coordinating the use of nonmanual markers (e.g., the questioning look) and manual modulation (e.g., holding the sign for an extended duration). Cross-fostered chimpanzees, who use signs of American Sign Language (ASL), have demonstrated behaviors that appear in human conversation, including question-answer exchanges. The current study describes the production of questions by signing chimpanzees in a conversational context and offers a methodology for quantifying the relationship between nonmanual markers and manual modulation involved in interrogative utterances.

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A Longitudinal Assessment of Vocabulary Retention in Symbol-Competent Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Beran

Heimbauer

2015

PLoS ONE

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A number of studies from the 1960s to 1990s assessed the symbolic competence of great apes and other animals. These studies provided varying forms of evidence that some species were capable of symbolically representing their worlds, both through productive symbol use and comprehension of symbolic stimuli. One such project at the Language Research Center involved training chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) to use lexigram symbols (geometric visual stimuli that represented objects, actions, locations, and individuals). Those studies now are more than 40 years old, and only a few of the apes involved in those studies are still alive. Three of these chimpanzees (and a fourth, control chimpanzee) were assessed across a 10-year period from 1999 to 2008 for their continued knowledge of lexigram symbols and, in the case of one chimpanzee, the continued ability to comprehend human speech. This article describes that longitudinal assessment and outlines the degree to which symbol competence was retained by these chimpanzees across that decade-long period. All chimpanzees showed retention of lexigram vocabularies, although there were differences in the number of words that were retained across the individuals. One chimpanzee also showed continual retention of human speech perception. These retained vocabularies largely consisted of food item names, but also names of inedible objects, locations, individuals, and some actions. Many of these retained words were for things that are not common in the daily lives of the chimpanzees and for things that are rarely requested by the chimpanzees. Thus, the early experiences of these chimpanzees in symbol-rich environments have produced long-lasting memories for symbol meaning, and those competencies have benefited research in a variety of topics in comparative cognition.

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The communicative functions of five signing chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Cited by 3 publications

References 38 publications

Sign Language Studies with Chimpanzees in Sanctuary

Sign Language Studies with Chimpanzees in Sanctuary

Chimpanzees coordinate interrogative markers to ask questions

A Longitudinal Assessment of Vocabulary Retention in Symbol-Competent Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

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