An Introduction to Psycholinguistics: Mid-Ch4+5 PDF

4 Wild and isolated children and the critical age issue Chapter 4 Wild and isolated children and the critical age issue for language learning It seems that people have always wondered about whether language is s...

4 Wild and isolated children and the critical age issue Chapter 4 Wild and isolated children and the critical age issue for language learning It seems that people have always wondered about whether language is something that is as natural to humans as walking and smiling. They have also wondered whether, even without experiencing language, children are able to produce speech on their own. People are still very much interested in these and in other related questions as well, such as whether there is an age beyond which a person is unable to learn a first or a second language. Since ethical considerations today should deter scientists from conducting language deprivation experiments with children, scientists have been on the lookout for cases that occur naturally, so to speak, i.e. without their intervention, such as through peculiar circumstances or the perversity of human behaviour. Over the past few centuries there have been a number of reported cases of children raised by wolves, dogs, pigs, sheep, and other animals. (A fascinat- ing collection of such cases is described in Malson’s 1972 book Wolf Children.) These children are known as wild or feral children. There are even more recent stories about children being raised by animals, such as the account of two girls raised by wolves in India (Singh and Zingg, 1942), and the recent cases of Ukrainian children who survived with dogs (discussed later in the chapter). On a different level, there are cases of children who have been kept in confinement or isolation by their parents or others, and consequently were not exposed to language. Studying such cases might provide insight into certain psycholinguistic questions. 4.1 Victor: the Wild Boy of Aveyron Scientific investigation into the matter of wild children increased dramatically in January of the year 1800 when a boy was captured by hunters in the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in the Aveyron district of France. (For detailed accounts of Victor see Lane, 1976, and Shattuck, 1981.) 91 AIT_C04.pm5 91 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  First-language learning The boy appeared to be 11 or 12 years old, was naked except for what was left of a tattered shirt, and he made no sounds other than guttural animal-like noises. He seemed to have survived on his own for years in the wild. Probably he had been abandoned originally, but at what age or by whom could not be ascertained. 4.1.1 Itard tries teaching speech but fails Not long after, the boy’s education was assigned to an eager educator, the creative and dedicated Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard. Itard set up an ambitious programme with goals that included social as well as language training. The Wild Boy was given the name ‘Victor’ by Itard and his education began with intense work that involved a variety of games and activities that Itard designed to socialize Victor and make him aware of the world around him. These had a dramatic positive effect. Speech training with Victor proved to be very frustrating for Itard. It centred around simply trying to get Victor to repeat some words and speech sounds. Victor first had to learn from where speech sounds were originat- ing before he could associate such sounds with language. Eventually, Victor came to be able to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in the environment and he was even able to differentiate the sounds of normal speech from the poorly pronounced speech sounds made by the deaf chil- dren in the institute for the deaf where he now resided. Victor first learned to repeat the sound ‘li’, apparently his personal contrac- tion of ‘Julie’, the name of the daughter of an assistant at the institute, Madame Guérin. In addition, he would repeat the phrase ‘Oh Dieu!’ (Oh God!), which he picked up from Madame Guérin. He also learned to say the word for milk (lait in French). With regard to this word, however, Itard noted that Victor would generally repeat it when given milk, but would not really use the word in a communicative sense, such as in asking for milk. On the other hand, Victor was able to comprehend speech in the form of commands for household chores, and made a specific sound each time he wanted a wheel- barrow ride. It was not clear, though, that the means of communication was actually language rather than simply the recognition of environmental context. 4.1.2 Itard tries reading and writing with success Itard decided to abandon attempts to teach Victor language by speech imi- tation and moved on to another of his goals, to sharpen the boy’s perceptual abilities. He embarked on a programme of having Victor learn to match colours and shapes, and then match drawings with the objects they represented. Following an insightful idea, he then set about teaching Victor the letters of the alphabet using letters on individual cards. The boy learned the milk word lait again, but this time in the form of alphabetic letters. Victor was 92 AIT_C04.pm5 92 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  4 Wild and isolated children and the critical age issue able to spell it out, at first backwards, then upside down, since that is how he had first seen it from across the table. Of his own accord, he later picked out those letters and seemed to use them to spell out a request for milk when he was taken on a visit by Itard to a friend’s home. However, it is possible that Victor may have simply been showing off his new toys, the cards, to Itard’s friend. Eventually, Victor did make progress in reading. Initially, Victor took written words such as ‘book’ to mean a specific object, a particular book, and eventually he learned to associate the words with classes of objects, in this example, all books. (Note that although the words are written here in English, it is French spelling that is implied.) Victor also went through some of the same problems of overgeneralization that ordinary children go through in learning language, considering, for example, a knife to be ‘razor’. He learned adjectives such as ‘big’ and ‘small’, ‘hot’ and ‘cold’, and a variety of colour words. He also learned verbs such as ‘eat’, ‘drink’, ‘touch’, and ‘throw’. Each of these words was written on a card for him. In the beginning, he communicated with others using the word cards. Later he was able to write the words himself, from memory. In less than a year, Itard was able to issue a report stating, in effect, that Victor’s senses, memory, and attention were intact, that he had the ability to compare and judge, and that he could read and write to some extent. Victor’s speech did not improve, however, and it was speech that Itard was con- cerned with. Unfortunately, he did not follow up on teaching reading, which could have benefited Victor greatly. 4.1.3 Itard tries again at speech, fails, then gives up Itard devoted five years to Victor. Near the end of that period, he tried once again to teach the boy to speak. These attempts failed too; soon afterwards Itard decided to end his work with Victor. He arranged for Victor to live in a house with Madame Guérin. Victor lived there for 18 years, continuing to be mute until his death in 1828 at the age of about 38. The interested reader is urged to view the excellent movie, The Wild Child, (its original French title is L’Enfant Sauvage), made by François Truffault in 1969, which portrays the story of Itard and Victor. 4.2 Genie: raised in isolation 4.2.1 Genie is discovered at 13 years of age, brutally abused While the case of Victor may have been that of simple child abandonment, it is quite different from enforced seclusion, where children are isolated from 93 AIT_C04.pm5 93 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  First-language learning even the outside environment and mistreated. One such well-documented case is that of a girl whom researchers called Genie (Curtiss et al., 1974; Fromkin et al., 1974; Curtiss, 1977, 1981; Rymer, 1993). Genie (a pseudonym) was discovered in the early 1970s in the Los Angeles area of California. She was 13 years old and had been locked in a small room in her house by her father for the preceding 12 years! During the day she had been kept naked except for a harness that held her to an infant’s toilet seat. At night she was put into a restraining sleeping bag and placed in a covered crib that was in effect a cage. She was fed but never spoken to. Her father beat her frequently with a wooden stick and growled at her like a dog while doing so. Other than a couple of plastic raincoats, empty thread spools, an occasional magazine, and some empty containers that she was given to play with, she had nothing much to look at (the small windows in her room were covered by curtains), little to touch, little to do. Genie’s mother eventually escaped, taking the child with her. It was in this way that the case was discovered by the authorities. As for the father, he committed suicide on the day he was to be put on trial for mistreating the child. At the time of her discovery, Genie was in a pitiful physical condition and appeared to have no language. Based on the information later provided by her mother, the girl had started to begin to acquire language just prior to her confinement, when she was around 20 months of age. This is about the same age that Helen Keller (discussed later in this chapter) lost her hearing and vision. However, if Genie had learned to comprehend some basic elements of speech, she would have likely lost them after 12 years of living in silence. 4.2.2 Genie is given freedom and care Like Victor, during her first few weeks of freedom Genie was alert and curious. But, unlike Victor, she displayed some ability to understand and even imitate (although poorly) some individual words, such as ‘mother’, ‘red’, and ‘bunny’. However, except for such words, she had little if any comprehension of grammatical structures (Fromkin et al., 1974, p. 87). Gener- ally, she responded only to gestures and to the intonation of words. Batteries of psychological tests indicated that her cognitive abilities were little more than those of a 2-year-old, with her language displaying many of the char- acteristics of 2-year-olds as they go through the initial stages of language learning. After just a few months of care, however, Genie changed considerably. She grew, gained weight and strength, and was able to go on long walks. While her original speech production had been limited to a few utterances such as ‘No-more’ and ‘Stoppit’, by the end of a few months she had ac- quired the words for hundreds of objects! She had an intense curiosity about the names of things in the world around her. 94 AIT_C04.pm5 94 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  4 Wild and isolated children and the critical age issue 4.2.3 Genie responds linguistically and socially After about a year had passed since she was first discovered, Genie was evaluated again on her language ability (Curtiss, 1977). She was tested, for example, on a variety of syntactic structures, such as her understanding of simple negation, and could respond correctly to sentences like ‘Show me the bunny that does not have a carrot’ as opposed to ‘Show me the bunny that has a carrot’. She was tested on her understanding of adjectives, such as ‘big’ and ‘little’ (‘Point to the big circle’). She was required to place objects with respect to other objects, e.g. ‘in’, ‘under’, ‘next to’, ‘behind’, to see if she understood the relationships expressed by those prepositions. It was found that Genie’s ability to understand speech had improved quite rapidly, although her progress in speech production was very slow and continued to be slow. 4.2.4 Genie reaches a peak in language learning Genie’s language learning was studied for about eight years, after which time she made little progress. Her language ability, both in terms of under- standing and production, remained well below normal and her speech con- tinued to be ungrammatical. Genie, like Victor, was not able to acquire a normal level of language despite receiving a great amount of care, attention, instruction, and linguistic input. Genie was finally placed in a home for retarded adults, where she now lives (Rymer, 1993). This was the end of the scientific collection of data on Genie’s linguistic or other development. (The interested reader is urged to view the fine televison programme concerning the Genie case produced by NOVA, Public Broadcasting (PBS) in the USA, available on videotape under the title, Genie: Secrets of the Wild Child.) 4.3 Isabelle: confinement with a mute mother 4.3.1 Isabelle’s background Mason (1942) reported a case that concerned a child, Isabelle (a pseudonym), who, because of her confinement with a mute mother, did not begin to learn language until she gained her freedom at 61/2 years of age. The mother of Isabelle had sustained a brain injury at the age of 2, and as a result never developed speech. According to Mason, ‘She was wholly uneducated. She could neither talk, nor read, nor write, but communicated with her family by means of crude gestures of her own origination’ (p. 295). When she was 22, the woman had a child, Isabelle. ‘During the period of her pregnancy, and for six and a half years after the child’s birth, the mother 95 AIT_C04.pm5 95 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  First-language learning and child had apparently been locked in a room behind drawn shades’ (p. 295). The mother finally escaped, taking Isabelle, and it was then that Isabelle’s case was brought to the attention of the authorities. This led to Isabelle’s admittance to the Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, in November of 1938. Mason was assistant director of the Speech Clinic of the hospital and she undertook the task of trying to help Isabelle. 4.3.2 Isabelle’s progress Isabelle’s first attempt at vocalization came just one week after Mason’s first visit with her. The child’s first spoken sounds were approximations of ‘ball’ and ‘car’ in response to being shown a ball and a toy car and being prompted by Mason through gesture to try and say the words. In less than three months after her entrance to the hospital, Isabelle was producing sentence utterances! We find this entry in Mason’s journal: Feb. 8, 1939. [Isabelle] says the following sentences voluntarily: That’s my baby; I love my baby; open your eyes; close your eyes; I don’t know; I don’t want; that’s funny; top it – at’s mine (when another child attempted to take one of her toys). (p. 301) After just one year, ‘Isabelle listens attentively while a story is read to her. She retells the story in her own limited vocabulary, bringing out the main points’ (p. 302). After a year and a half, the report of a student teacher working with Isabelle noted that the child’s questions now included com- plex structures such as, ‘Why does the paste come out if one upsets the jar?’ and ‘What did Miss Mason say when you told her I cleaned my classroom?’ (p. 303). We find represented in these sentences WH questions (why, when, etc.) with the auxiliary ‘do’, embedded sentences, conditional conjoining, and proper tensing! Thus, after only 20 months, Isabelle ‘has progressed from her first spoken word to full length sentences... [and]... intelligent questioning’ (p. 303). Truly, this was a remarkable achievement. And so different from the out- comes with Victor and Genie. Unfortunately, no further reports on Isabelle’s progress are available to our knowledge. 4.4 Chelsea: began to learn language at age 32 4.4.1 Misdiagnosed as retarded, not deaf Another case in an entirely different context is that of a girl, Chelsea (a pseudonym), who only began to learn language at the age of 32! When she was born, Chelsea’s family thought that she was deaf. Initially misdiagnosed as retarded, and because she lived in a rural area in Northern California, 96 AIT_C04.pm5 96 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  4 Wild and isolated children and the critical age issue she did not receive any language training or instruction of any kind. Unlike Victor and Genie, Chelsea grew up in a loving family environment. When, at the age of 32, her hearing was properly tested, it was discovered that she was not totally deaf but only partially hearing-impaired. Hearing aids were fitted to correct for the impairment and with them she was able to hear speech relatively normally. 4.4.2 Language development Through language instruction, Chelsea has developed an extensive vocabu- lary. Unlike Genie, though, her syntactic profile appears to lack any word order. Curtiss (1989) provides examples of the utterances Chelsea has pro- duced. Some of these are: The small a the hat. Richard eat peppers hot. Orange Tim car in. Banana the eat. I Wanda be drive come. The boat sits water on. Breakfast eating girl. Combing hair the boy. The girl is come the ice cream shopping buying the man. (pp. 119–20) Though Chelsea has developed rapidly in vocabulary and the use of language in a wide range of speech acts (complaints, requests) and social rituals (greetings), she was unable to form grammatically correct utter- ances and to remain on topic. Evidently, since that time there has been improvement, since Chelsea, who is now about 50 years old, has held a job where she does some reading and writing. She interacts socially and is independent. 4.5 Helen Keller: the renowned deaf and blind girl 4.5.1 Becomes deaf and blind at 19 months then secures a teacher Any discussion of language deprivation cannot be considered complete without the case of Helen Keller (1880–1969). Keller was born normal and then, due to illness, she became deaf and blind at the age of 19 months. Thus, before tragedy struck, she had already experienced some degree of language learning and would probably have had some degree of compre- hension and production. That was the extent of her language exposure until six years later in 1887, at age 7, when Anne Sullivan Macy came to teach her language. Macy, herself partly blind and only 21 years old, was engaged by Keller’s parents on the recommendation of Alexander Graham Bell. 97 AIT_C04.pm5 97 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  First-language learning Before becoming famous as the inventor of the telephone (and after, as well), Bell was a noted educator of the deaf, as was his Scottish father before him. Bell’s mother and his own wife were deaf. Bell was, therefore, quite familiar with deafness and the problems involved in deaf education. (See Chapter 2 for more on Bell’s involvement in deaf education.) Helen’s case was more complex, though, since she was blind as well. On the frontis- piece of this book Helen is shown communicating with Bell by hand signals while she is also communicating with Sullivan Macy by touching her lips and vocal chords with her hands. 4.5.2 Helen learns language In spite of Keller’s seemingly overwhelming sensory handicaps, Sullivan Macy’s efforts to teach Helen language through the sense of touch were successful. (Sullivan Macy was trained at the Perkins’ Institute for the Blind in Boston and it was there that she learned communication techniques in teaching blind–deaf persons.) Thus, Helen learned language through touch and later even learned to speak. This was accomplished by Helen’s directly touching the speech articulators around the face (mouth, lips, vocal cords, throat, etc.) of Sullivan Macy and others (see frontispiece photo of Bell, Keller and Sullivan Macy). Even though Helen was unable to hear and receive any auditory feed- back of her own speech, she nevertheless was able to produce speech even though she could not receive any auditory feedback. (She may have re- tained some of the speech ability that she had acquired prior to her illness.) While recognizable, her speech was somewhat strange, since she spoke in a high-pitched monotone manner (similar to that of the high-pitched voice of Genie). Helen went on to learn to read and produce Braille. Keller’s (1903/1972) autobiography, The Story of My Life, is fascinating to read. That dramatic moment when she learned her first word is movingly described: [My teacher] brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure. We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some- one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool water stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word w-a-t-e-r, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of some- thing forgotten, a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! (1972, pp. 11–12) 98 AIT_C04.pm5 98 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  4 Wild and isolated children and the critical age issue The essential aspect of language, that a sound, sign, or touch could repre- sent an object, had been discovered. It is significant that although Helen had no words for the situations and events that she describes prior to her learning of her first word, she was able to think clearly about her life and then to write about it later. (This bears on the issue that is discussed in Chapter 9, which is whether language is necessary in order for persons to think.) Keller went on to graduate from Radcliffe (the Harvard University division for women in those days) with honours and to become an acclaimed lec- turer and writer in the service of handicapped people around the world. How is it that Keller was able to attain the level of language excellence that she did? It might be argued that Keller’s success in language learning was beneficially affected by the relatively short encounter she had with speech in her infancy. This may be so to some extent. However, the fact that, after the lengthy six-year period of not being exposed to language, it took as long as it did for her to learn her first word, ‘water’, suggests that her pre-illness exposure to language was of minimal benefit. 4.6 Oxana and Edik: raised by dogs Abandoned children are still being found. Two cases of children being cared for by dogs have been recently reported in Ukraine. 4.6.1 Oxana In 1991, a girl, Oxana, was discovered living in a kennel in the back garden of the family home in a town in Ukraine. She was born in 1983 and her medical history reported her to be a healthy child. However, her parents were alcoholics, and one day 3-year-old Oxana was simply left outside. Looking for shelter, she crawled into a dog house, and for the next five years a dog helped her survive, undoubtedly, by providing her with food and warmth. When Oxana was found, she behaved and moved around on all fours like a dog. She mostly barked, could hardly speak, and did not seem to think that speaking was necessary. At the time of this writing Oxana is 19 years old, and lives in a home for the mentally ill. Her speech has improved, she can now talk in simple sentences, but she has difficulties relating to people. Like the cases of Victor and Genie, Oxana’s development seems to come to a limit and progresses no further. Her doctor, Vladimir Nagorny, comments that they have been trying to find her an occupation and teach her how to live among people, but most likely she will never be considered a normal person again. 99 AIT_C04.pm5 99 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  First-language learning 4.6.2 Edik In 1999 in a small town in Ukraine, social workers found 4-year-old Edik in a deserted apartment. It turned out that his mother was an alcoholic, too, and though she stayed in the apartment from time to time, she hadn’t cared for the boy since he was 2 years old. He had to turn to stray dogs for sur- vival. Two years after his discovery, Edik was living in a foster home. His language skills and grammar improved, but slowly. At the age of 6, his speech was like that of a 3-year-old. James Law, Professor of Language and Communication Studies, City University, London, studied Edik and remains optimistic about his language progress; Edik’s social skills, however, are likely to remain impaired, he says. 4.7 A critical age for first-language learning? 4.7.1 Why did only Isabelle and Helen fully learn language? Why is it that Isabelle and Helen learned language to the full but Victor, Genie, and Chelsea did not? Why didn’t Victor, Genie, and Chelsea learn more than they did, particularly considering their teachers’ dedication to their welfare and their use of evidently sound educational ideas? One thing is certain, and that is: without exposure to language, children will not acquire language. Children need some form of exposure, be it in the form of speech, signs, writing, or touch, before language learning can occur and that exposure should be offered as early as possible in the child’s life. 4.7.2 Two major factors governing language learning In reviewing the details of the cases of Victor, Genie, Isabelle, Chelsea, and Helen, we can identify two major factors that could have operated to influ- ence their varying success in language learning. These relate to exposure to language and the extent of non-linguistic trauma: (1) the age at which expos- ure to language began, and (2) the extent of any physical, psychological, and social trauma prior to exposure to language. As far as Victor is concerned, we do not know why he had been roaming alone in the wild, nor do we know whether he had experienced any lan- guage prior to his capture. It may be that for most, or all, of the estimated 11 or so years of his life, his exposure to language and to ordinary human life had been minimal. However, he could have had some exposure to language before his abandonment. But why he was abandoned will never be known, although there is the possibility that he could have been re- garded as retarded. He could not have been very retarded, for, as Malson 100 AIT_C04.pm5 100 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  4 Wild and isolated children and the critical age issue (1972) has argued, at least average or better intelligence is necessary for one to be able to survive in the wild. Barring the unlikelihood of his being raised by animals, Victor must have been raised by humans, at least in infancy, for some period of time. Because we have no information regarding such crucial circumstances, there is no way we can state with any assurance why Victor was not able to attain full competence in speech or written language. Whether Victor was or was not normal at birth is something that we shall never know. Lenneberg (1967) was undoubtedly correct when he said, ‘In the absence of information on such a point, virtually no generalization may be made with regard to human development’ (p. 142). 4.7.3 Why did Genie not progress more than she did? Genie, at 13 years, was about Victor’s age (11 or 12 years) before she was exposed to language. Nevertheless, despite over 11 years of isolation, she was able to develop a much higher level of language than Victor; her achieve- ment was mainly in the area of speech comprehension. Genie’s accomplish- ment in this respect establishes that, if there is a critical age for acquiring the fundamentals of a first language, i.e. grammatical structures, grammat- ical rules, and vocabulary, the limiting age cannot be very young, for Genie was over 13 years old when she began to learn language. However, there is still some controversy over Genie’s accomplishments. Although Curtiss, after years of collecting data on Genie, concludes, ‘She had a clear semantic ability but could not learn syntax’ (Rymer, 1993, p. 156), other researchers disagree. Jones (1995) argues that inconsistencies in the presentation of the data on Genie call into question the exact extent of her progress in acquiring English syntax. Yet Genie’s attained level of speech comprehension was significant. It is certainly beyond that which would be expected if there really were a critical age for the learning of syntax. That Genie’s speech production ability was faulty in terms of pronunciation may be related to factors that operate in the learning of second-language pronunciation by ordinary people (see Chapter 6), where it has been found that the ability to control certain muscles of the body, in particular the articulators of speech (the tongue, mouth, vocal cords, etc.), generally begins to decline around 10 to 12 years of age. The fact that Genie had not used speech from infancy until she was 13 years old probably put her at a greater disadvantage than would be the case for a typical second-language learner of the same age. At least the ordinary second-language learner would, in using his or her first language, have had the benefit of exercising the articulators of speech for over a decade. Then, too, we cannot be sure that Genie’s poor speech ability was not the result of some negative psychological influence due to her long mistreatment. 101 AIT_C04.pm5 101 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  First-language learning 4.7.4 Chelsea: insufficient evidence Curtiss (1989) argues that Chelsea’s case demonstrates that, beyond a critical age for learning, syntax cannot be learned but that other aspects of language are not affected, such as vocabulary and the proper use of lan- guage in context (pragmatics). This view is not substantiated. The crucial data for critical age lie in syntactic understanding and not production. Chelsea’s abilities in this regard were not adequately assessed, as far as we can tell. 4.7.5 The achievements of Isabelle and Helen The language achievements of Isabelle and Helen contrast sharply with those of Victor and Genie. Why were these two girls able to do so well? The fact that Helen had been exposed to language during her first 19 months of life is not likely to have been the deciding factor because Isabelle did quite well even though she had no exposure to language before she was dis- covered at 61/2 years of age. One thing Helen did have that some of the other children did not is a loving family. Even during her period of language deprivation, she was a member of a family who did their utmost on her behalf so that she could enjoy life. Isabelle, too, although she was confined with her mother, could benefit from the affection that her mother had for her. So, the critical variable here may be the affection and social support which both Helen and Isabelle were able to experience. This may have allowed them to develop intellectually despite their language deprivation. Some consideration might be given to the use of a form of communica- tion through gesture that Isabelle and her mother used. Deaf children have been known to develop their own sign-language systems complete with rudimentary syntax even when they have no exposure to formal sign language (Goldin-Meadow and Mylander, 1998). The gesture system used between Isabelle and her mother may have helped Isabelle to understand and learn the relationship between object and symbol crucial for language learning. 4.7.6 Is there a critical age for first-language learning? Most significant for the Critical Age hypothesis is the fact that Isabelle and Helen started to learn language at an early age following a relatively short period of deprivation: language exposure and teaching began for Isabelle at 6 years old and for Helen at 7 years. On the other hand, Victor and Genie, who were almost twice as old as these girls when discovered, did not learn as much language as Helen and Isabelle did, nor did Chelsea. This could be, as some theorists, such as Lenneberg (1967), have suggested, due to the biological maturation of the brain. 102 AIT_C04.pm5 102 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  4 Wild and isolated children and the critical age issue In any case, to rely only on the cases of Victor, Genie, and Chelsea to make a case for critical age is surely not warranted. There are too many unknown factors and the data, particularly for Genie and Chelsea, are not clear. Certainly, the critical age, if there is one, could not be much younger than 6 or 7 years since that would exclude Isabelle and Helen, who in fact did learn language after that age. Clearly, the ideal experimental situation for studying the problem of a critical age for first-language learning has not yet presented itself. Let us hope for the sake of some poor child that it never does. 103 AIT_C04.pm5 103 8/18/06, 6:56 PM  First-language learning Chapter 5 Animals and language learning Human beings have language, but what about animals? Do apes, dolphins, or other creatures have language and use their language to communicate with one another as we do? How about household pets? If they don’t have their own language, can we teach them some sort of human language? But if they cannot learn human language, would this mean that they are lacking in intelligence, or would it mean that they lack physical structures that only humans are born with? Curiosity and fantasy are the stuff that motivates scientists. Such fantasies are reminiscent of Hugh Lofting’s famous children’s stories of Dr Doolittle, the doctor who could speak the languages of all the animals in the world. This, for example, is the dream of one noted animal researcher: I had... incredible fantasies about the possibilities of ape language. One of them was that I could go to some section of Africa where there are chimps in the wild and have Nim (the chimp to whom I taught sign language) serve as an interpreter for kinds of communication that are unknown to humans. That is, I would ask Nim, ‘What is that chimp over there saying to the other chimp?’ and Nim would explain it to me in sign language. (Terrace, 1983) We shall begin with a review of research that attempts to teach language to apes, a Pongidae primate family that includes chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans and is the most highly developed form of primate life next to humans. 5.1 Teaching spoken English to apes 5.1.1 The first scientific attempt: with an orangutan The earliest-known scientific attempt at teaching language to an ape was that of Furness (1916) in the USA, who attempted to teach an orangutan to speak. The brief four-month project ended in tragedy, when the animal died with a high fever while repeating the two words it had learned to say, 104 AIT_C05.pm5 104 17/10/2005, 16:57  5 Animals and language learning ‘papa’ and ‘cup’. Later more comprehensive scientific attempts to teach speech to animals were made with chimpanzees. These were conducted by psychologists in the 1920s through the 1940s by two separate husband-and- wife teams, the Kelloggs (1933/1968) and the Hayes (1951). Let us now consider their research. 5.1.2 Gua: the chimp raised with a human ‘sibling’ Winthrop and Luella Kellogg (Kellogg and Kellogg, 1933; Kellogg, 1968) raised a female chimp named Gua along with their own son, Donald. Their idea was that by giving the chimpanzee the same input and social interaction as a human child, the chimpanzee would learn language in the same way that the human child learns its first language. Gua, a female, and Donald, the boy, were born less than three months apart, with Gua being the younger. For nine months they were raised in the home as siblings. Initially on problem-solving tests and tests of mental ability the two scored the same, but over time the boy surpassed the chimp. The Kelloggs noted that Gua demonstrated an exceptional ability to learn by imitation but that the boy was more versatile and continuous in his learn- ing. Gua was raised in an ordinary speech environment with no specific language training being given. The Kelloggs wanted to see if Gua could learn language as ordinary human children do, where language training is not given. Despite the similarities of their upbringing and physical and mental skills, Gua did not learn to say any words even though words were repeated numerous times to her in context. During the same time, however, the boy had become reasonably fluent in the spoken language, even being able to produce speech with some syntactic complexity. However, the researchers reported that by 16 months of age, and over the period of nine months that she was with the family, Gua learned to respond appropriately to 95 spoken words, phrases, and sentences. Her speech comprehension was, therefore, substantial. She could give appropriate behavioural responses to spoken commands like ‘Lie down’, ‘No, no’, ‘Shake hands’, ‘Don’t touch’, ‘Give it to Donald’, ‘Get down’, ‘Kiss Donald’. Quite an impressive achievement, even in the light of later studies, although it is not clear how well the Kelloggs controlled for environmental cues that could tip off the chimp as to the correct response. The experiment was terminated, apparently when the researchers noted that Donald was picking up too much chimpanzee-type behaviour. 5.1.3 Viki: another chimp raised in a human household Another of the home-rearing projects was that of Cathy and Keith Hayes (Hayes, 1951), who raised a baby female chimpanzee from infancy. The 105 AIT_C05.pm5 105 17/10/2005, 16:57  First-language learning chimp was named Viki. Like Gua, Viki was treated as a full member of the family; she ate her meals at the table, played games at home, and went on outings. She was lively and bright. Unlike Gua, though, Viki was given special speech training in pronunci- ation. However, despite the Hayes’ efforts, in which they helped Viki to make the shapes of sounds with her mouth, after three years Viki had only learned to utter four words: ‘mama’, ‘papa’, ‘up’, and ‘cup’, and these were so poorly pronounced that they were hard to understand. As far as speech understanding is concerned, Cathy Hayes (1951, p. 227) reports, ‘Are there any words which Viki comprehends without need of supplementary cues? There are a few... She obeys the commands: “Go to your room”, “Go outside” and “Go upstairs” without error.’ This result is surprising compared to the much longer list of items that Gua could under- stand. Yet the Hayes did seem to be aware of the need to neutralize the effect of environmental cues when testing for speech comprehension. Even so, because chimps have a great ability to mimic and to read facial expres- sions and body language (Fouts and Mills, 1997; Savage-Rumbaugh et al., 1998), special measures have to be taken to control such variables. Perhaps it is an oversight on the part of the Hayes, but they did not include the four words that Viki could say, ‘mama’, ‘papa’, ‘up’, and ‘cup’ (the first author viewed a videotape of their home movie). Perhaps Viki could say but did not know the meaning of these words, but this does not seem likely. There is a great discrepancy in the two studies regarding the degree of chimp learning, with Gua learning so much more than Viki. Whether this could be due to the influence of Gua’s ‘sibling’, Donald, is not clear. One thing though is clear: in both studies speech comprehension was well in advance of speech production, a fact that coincides with that of the human child language learner. A reading of their reports indicates that the re- searchers paid too much attention to speech production when much more could have been gained by focusing on speech comprehension. 5.2 Teaching sign language to the chimpanzee, gorilla and orangutan 5.2.1 Washoe: the first signing chimp In 1966, another husband-and-wife team of psychologists, Allen and Beatrice Gardner (1969, 1975), began to teach sign language to a baby chimp, a female they called Washoe (rhymes with ‘show’). They reasoned that any attempt to teach chimps to speak was doomed to failure because of the simple fact that chimps do not possess the necessary vocal apparatus for human speech. Viki’s failure to learn to speak could plausibly be said to be 106 AIT_C05.pm5 106 17/10/2005, 16:57  5 Animals and language learning (Savage-Rumbaugh et al., 1986). Such being the case, she and others be- lieved the bonobo to be a better candidate for language research than the other apes that researchers had used. Thus it was that the bonobo male chimp, Kanzi, and his younger sister, Mulika, were selected for study. In their training the researchers would point to a keyboard and speak in English in reference to objects, actions, locations that were of interest to the chimps. The lexigrams (visual word symbols) on the keyboard were made up of arbitrary geometrical symbols, each matching an object, action, or location. When touched, the lexigrams on the computer keyboard would produce synthesized English speech sounds for a particular word. Gestures and some sign-language signs were not taught but allowed to develop spon- taneously. No attempt was made to teach language. Rather, in the way that children learn language, the bonobos were exposed to language during normal interaction. Greenfield and Savage-Rumbaugh (1990) say that tiny Kanzi, when around 5 years old, learned over a period of five months to use grammar equivalent to that of a 2-year-old human child and had a vocabulary of about 250 words. It is also said that Kanzi has acquired grammatical rules that allow him to produce an infinite number of sentences (an extravagent claim, we must say) and even invent his own symbols and use them consistently. The researchers state that ‘Kanzi showed an incipient ability to use difference in symbol order to signal difference in meaning’ (Greenfield and Savage- Rumbaugh, 1990, p. 567). The word ‘incipient’ properly weakens the claim because symbol order may not have been acquired; strict scientific controls, particularly regarding knowledge of the world, were not employed. It seems, therefore, that Savage-Rumbaugh’s comparison of Kanzi’s com- prehension level to that of a human 21/2 years old (Savage-Rumbaugh et al., 1998) is unwarranted until stricter testing is done. It cannot be concluded that Kanzi has demonstrated any greater acquisition of language than the apes in other language studies. Why Kanzi’s younger sister Mulika has yet to achieve results equal to those of Kanzi is not explained. 5.4 Teaching language to dolphins 5.4.1 Elvar: the whistling dolphin There is much anecdotal lore about the intelligence of dolphins and whales. Until the 1960s, though, no scientific attempt had been made to determine their communicative abilities. In one of the first studies, Lilly (1962, 1965) tried to teach a dolphin to force air through its blow-hole in such a way that it would allow the dolphin to imitate human speech sounds. A young male dolphin named Elvar produced approximations of the word ‘squirt’, which Lilly had been trying to teach him to pronounce. Lilly also claimed that 113 AIT_C05.pm5 113 17/10/2005, 16:57  First-language learning Elvar interchanged human sounds with dolphin sounds as if he were attempting to translate, but Lilly provided no scientific substantiation in this regard. In fact, pronunciation difficulties were so great that Lilly was obliged to discontinue the study. He then moved on to investigate the means by which dolphins communicate with one another. Notwithstanding Lilly’s extravagant claims to the contrary (including claims that dolphins have an intelligence and a religion(!) that is superior to those of humans), research has yet to show that these animals use anything as complex as what we could call language. 5.4.2 Akeakamai and Phoenix: learning artificial languages through sight and sound A radically different and more scientific approach to the teaching of lan- guage to dolphins was later initiated by Louis Herman at the Dolphin Insti- tute, University of Hawaii. In an early study, rather than have dolphins mimic human sounds, Herman and his associates (Herman and Wolz, 1984) trained a bottlenosed dolphin to mimic computer-generated sounds. The dolphin not only demonstrated that it could learn to make new whis- tles but also that it could apply these whistles to the naming of objects such as ‘ball’, ‘hoop’, and ‘frisbee’. This is similar to the apes’ abilities to name objects through sign language or computer symbols. From this production- oriented research, Herman then turned his attention to the primary process of language comprehension. In his investigation of the dolphin’s language comprehension, Herman and his associates (Herman et al., 1984) conducted experiments using two different types of artificial languages, one involving sounds, the other involving visual gestures, i.e. signs. He wanted to see if, or how well, dolphins could learn to comprehend language. This was done not only to see if the animal could learn a human-created language system, but also to discover more about the cognitive abilities of dolphins. In 1979, a teaching programme was begun with two dolphins, Phoenix and Akeakamai (the latter’s name meaning ‘lover of wisdom’ in the Hawaiian language). Each dolphin learned one of the two artificial languages. Akea was taught the gesture-based language, while Phoenix was taught the sound- based language. Each was taught a vocabulary of about 30 words, mainly names of objects, agents, actions, and modifiers. The sound-based language had its sounds projected underwater into the dolphin tank. These sounds were controlled by Herman and his assistants from their underwater labor- atory, which had a window view into the tank. The visual language of gestures, invented by Herman and his colleagues, involved the use of the trainer’s arms and hands. The trainer stood by the side of the tank out of the water where he or she could be seen by the dolphin. The trainer would place and move his or her arms in different positions as in a sort of semaphore signal system. To avoid the unconscious 114 AIT_C05.pm5 114 17/10/2005, 16:57  5 Animals and language learning giving of helpful cues to the dolphins, the trainers wore opaque goggles so that the dolphins could not see their eyes. The two dolphins learned to carry out correctly a number of commands in the water. The commands consisted of two-, three-, four-, and even five-word sequences, with each command constructed on the basis of object and action words. Thus, ‘window tail touch’ is to be interpreted as ‘Touch a window with your tail’. The basic sentence structure was of the Subject–Object–Verb variety. Of special interest are Herman’s results, which show that generally the dolphins correctly responded to what are often called ‘semantically revers- ible sentences’, i.e. sentences for which the subjects and objects cannot be interpreted by meaning alone but where the use of syntactic knowledge is required. For example, the English sentences ‘Jack pushed Tom’ and ‘Tom pushed Jack’ describe two different events, one in which Jack is doing the pushing and another in which Tom is doing the pushing. Given our lack of knowledge about Jack and Tom, we can only judge that either event is equally likely to occur. Such equal reversibility would not be the case, however, with sentences like ‘The cat chased the mouse’ and ‘The mouse chased the cat’ since, based on our knowledge of the world, we would generally expect the cat rather than the mouse to be doing the chasing. Our expectations for certain events or situations can influence the interpretation we give to words. Similarly, an animal such as the dolphin might be able to respond appropriately to a string of words, not on the basis of their structural word order but on the dolphin’s life experience. A proper test for grammatical knowledge must take this phenomenon into account. Herman was aware of this problem, so, as part of his research, he pre- sented the dolphins with commands involving semantically reversible structures. He gave them, for example, both ‘pipe hoop fetch’ (Take the hoop to the pipe) and ‘hoop pipe fetch’ (Take the pipe to the hoop). Since the dolphins generally responded appropriately to both commands, Herman was able to conclude with some certainty that the dolphins had acquired a syntactic structure that involved relational and prepositional functions. Because word order in these commands indicates different semantic or mean- ing relationships, it is reasonable to claim that the dolphins had acquired such syntactic relational notions as direct object and indirect object. The dolphins, Herman emphasizes, can also respond to novel sentences on the basis of understanding words and their relations in a command structure. Once the structure and relations are learned, then all new sentences with those characteristics should be understood, providing, of course, that the meaning of component words is already known. Thus, after acquiring the notions of direct and indirect object, Akea responded correctly on her first exposure to the sentence ‘person left frisbee fetch’ (Take the left frisbee to the person). Herman is therefore able to deflect any criticism that the dolphins are merely carrying out the same sort of fixed stimulus–response 115 AIT_C05.pm5 115 17/10/2005, 16:57  First-language learning type of shaped behaviour that dolphins and whales in marine parks are trained to do. He correctly points out that it could not be simple stimulus– response shaped behaviour because the dolphins respond appropriately to specific commands that they have never received before. In later research, Herman introduced the dolphins to various notions such as Question (Herman and Forestell, 1985; Herman et al., 1993; Holder et al., 1993). A key aspect of this research is the dolphin’s ability to report on the absence of objects. In the wild, animals typically signal the presence of food or danger but probably seldom deal with topics relating to absence. Akea correctly responded to question forms such as ‘hoop Question’ (‘Is there a hoop?’) and ‘frisbee Question’ (‘Is there a frisbee?’) after searching the tank for these items. Moreover, when the question form was contrasted with the imperative (command) form, the dolphin would give the correct answer. Thus, given the question ‘hoop Question’, Akea would correctly press the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ paddles in the tank. Herman’s research is one of the most scientific and methodologically reliable on the learning of language by animals. It remains for further re- search to demonstrate whether dolphins would be able to express in pro- duction what they have already learned in terms of language comprehension. Devising such an appropriate means of production, however, is not easy. Perhaps Herman should return to his earlier work where he trained a dolphin to mimic computer-generated sounds. 5.5 Teaching spoken English to an African Grey parrot We all know that parrots and certain other birds can be taught to mimic human speech. But can they learn language? Prior to Irene Pepperberg’s research, most of us thought not. Pepperberg’s fascinating research has proven us wrong (particularly the first author in previous writings!). Pepperberg (Pepperberg, 1987, 1993; Pepperberg and Kozak, 1986) has worked with a male African Grey parrot she calls Alex. She used the speech mode because of the parrot’s excellent vocal and hearing abilities. Alex is now able to understand and answer questions on the colour, shape, and material of more than 100 objects. He can correctly name a host of items such as key, chain, tray, toy truck, block, cup, and box. Furthermore, he can identify them on the basis of seven colours (green, red, blue, yellow, grey, purple, and orange; although grey and green are sometimes indistinguish- able because of Alex’s pronunciation of green as ‘gree’), and of a number of shapes, up to those with six corners, including triangles, squares, pentagons, and hexagons. He can even tell you what an object is made of, such as cork, wood, paper, or wool. Alex is not only adept at identifying items but he can request them, refuse them, and answer questions pertaining to the abstract 116 AIT_C05.pm5 116 17/10/2005, 16:57  5 Animals and language learning categories of shape, colour, material, and quantity. He has shown clear knowledge of these abstract categories by using them to refer to new objects that were not in his training. Thus, in a test of Alex’s cognitive abilities involving a variety of ques- tions, ‘ “What color is object-X”, “What shape is object-Y?”, “What object is color-A?”, or “What object is shape-B?” ’ (Pepperberg, 1993, p. 235), Alex performed correctly on more than 80 per cent of the questions. Alex’s few errors are even more interesting than his correct performances. He initially produced ‘box’ as ‘bock’ and then replied to a question on colour with the answer ‘rock’ instead of the correct ‘block’. Then, when asked which object was blue, he confounded ‘box’ and ‘rock’ on two questions. Alex’s errors demonstrate that he behaves in much the same way as humans in making phonological errors. Alex’s accomplishments are admirable and in some ways, especially with his recognition of abstract categories, he has surpassed aspects of language knowledge that the apes and even the dolphins have demonstrated. He has not yet, though, reached the level of syntax that the dolphins have mas- tered. However, given that this research with Alex is ongoing and given that parrots are noted for their longevity, there is still a chance that Alex might acquire more syntax. Why Pepperberg has been successful with her parrot while others over the centuries have not is a puzzling question. It has been over 15 years since Pepperberg’s first investigation was published (Pepperberg, 1987), yet no other parrot study has appeared to our knowledge. (For more information about Pepperberg’s research, the reader can check her website, the address of which is given at the end of the chapter.) 5.6 Teaching Rico the dog to understand spoken English words The recent appearance of a language study with a dog has led us to wonder why household pets have not been brought to the university for language instruction more often. Rico is a 91/2-year-old border collie who has learned to understand more than 200 words for different objects, such as toys and balls, that have been said to him (Kaminski et al., 2004). He can learn a new word after being shown an unfamiliar object just once (an achievement that is the envy of these authors). No syntax, but still, Rico’s large vocabulary is greater than a lot of the animals who have been given language instruction. It is not likely, however, that any syntax would ever be learned. After all, household pets have been living together with humans for many thousands of years under the close scrutiny of their owners and nothing has ever been reported of dogs or cats learning more than single words, mainly commands for action. 117 AIT_C05.pm5 117 17/10/2005, 16:57  First-language learning 5.7 Conclusion The research with animals clearly shows that animals have only a rudi- mentary language ability. What is puzzling and requires explanation is why their language ability is so low when their overall intellectual ability is so much higher. Apes exhibit, for example, intelligent complex behaviour regarding social organization, food acquisition, and problem solving. And documented studies with apes going as far back as the First World War (the research of the renowned psychologist Wolfgang Köhler) demonstrate that they are creative and inventive in solving other types of problems. Why, then, are they not able to learn more of the language that is taught to them? After all, human children learn language (speech or sign) in all of its com- plexity. And why couldn’t the apes at least have learned to comprehend human speech, given that they have a hearing acuity that is as good as or better than human hearing? After all, there are human beings who are born with a deficit in speech production – the cases of Nolan, McDonald, and Rie in Chapter 1, for example – yet they can learn to comprehend language in all of its complexity. Contemporary theorists basically offer two types of explanations on the issue of animals vs. humans in the acquisition of language. Pro-intelligence theorists like Piaget, Putnam, and others, including ourselves, hold that animals lack certain aspects of intelligence that are needed for the learning of such a complex ability as language. Innatists like Chomsky, on the other hand, argue that the effect is due to animals being born without a special language ability, an ability that is little related to intelligence. Chomsky has offered a very telling argument against researchers who teach language to animals. If apes really had the ability to use a grammar, they surely would have developed it on their own by now; especially with language being so advantageous for survival. It would be rather odd to think that an animal would have developed, through evolution, the highly complex capacity for language but would not have used that capacity until humans from universities came along to show them how. Whether animals lack intelligence as the Empiricists say, or lack a special language ability as the Rationalists say, it seems evident that animals do not have much of a capacity for a grammar-based language. 5.8 Websites for more information A number of websites regarding the research discussed in this chapter and other research are available to the interested reader. 118 AIT_C05.pm5 118 17/10/2005, 16:57  5 Animals and language learning Fouts Research and Washoe: http://www.cwu.edu/~cwuchci Herman and Dolphin Research: http://www.dolphin-institute.org http://www.dolphins.org/Learn/lmm-dcmm.htm Patterson and Koko Gorilla Research: http://www.gorilla.org Pepperberg and Parrot Research: http://www.alexfoundation.org http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/93/139/01_5_m.html http://csbi.mit.edu/faculty/Members/IrenePepperberg Savage-Rumbaugh Research: http://www.littletree.com.au/koko.htm Language and Apes Research: http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~dmswitze/apelang.html http://whyfiles.org/058language/ape_talk.html 119 AIT_C05.pm5 119 17/10/2005, 16:57