Origins of Human Language - Why Us? - METHOD Minding the gap between behavior and knowledge

8 important questions on Origins of Human Language - Why Us? - METHOD Minding the gap between behavior and knowledge

What do researchers need to ask when testing the intelligence of animals?

What evidence do we need to have in order to be convinced that the animal is using a word in the same way that a human does?

What is another question that researchers need to ask when testing the intelligence of animals?


And how do we rule out other explanations of the
behavior that are based on much simpler cognitive machinery than that of humans?

What did Sue Savage-Rumbaugh write about primate language capabilities in her paper?


In 1980, she and her colleagues wrote a paper cautioning researchers against making overly enthusiastic claims when studying the linguistic capabilities of apes.
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What was one of the possible methodological flaws Sue Savage-Rumbaugh worried about?


A tendency to overattribute human-like
cognition to simple behaviors.

What do you need to be able to show when deciding what an ape knows about using a sign or a symbol?


You need to be able to show that the ape can produce the word in a wide variety of situations, not just to bring
about a specific result.


Why is it sometimes not enough to see a chimp using the sign in a sensible way?


if the same chimp also uses the sign in situations where it seems inappropriate or not meaningful, it lessens the confidence that the chimp truly knows the meaning of that sign.


About what were Savage-Rumbaugh and her colleagues worried about?


The possibility that researchers might unknowingly provide cues that nudge the ape to produce a sign that seems sensible given
the context.

What is an example of researchers nudging the apes' behavior?


They might inadvertently communicate approval or disapproval, thereby steering the chimp’s signing behavior in the right direction. In order to make a fair assessment of what a
chimp actually knows, the researcher has to set up testing situations in which the possibility of such inadvertent cues has been eliminated.

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