1. Human Learning
Topic 12 - 3: Special Issues: Tool Use & Language
CEDP324 Ryan Sain, Ph.D. 1 3/30/2012

2. Origins
 1927 – chimp put a box on another to reach food
 Many studies involving primates
 Not really surprising
 Crows of New Caledonia
 Tool fabrication and use
CEDP324 Ryan Sain, Ph.D. 2 3/30/2012

3. The Crows
 Established a colony
 Wild birds
 Use twigs of varying lengths to reach food in a tube
 At a rate greater than chance
 A bucket in a tube
 Bird had to bend metal strips to form a hook
 Adding rocks to water to raise food
CEDP324 Ryan Sain, Ph.D. 3 3/30/2012

4. Explanations
 Complex cognitions
 Intelligence
 Reinforcement
 Just a case of conditioning
 Cannot separate the two in wild birds
 No control of reinforcement history
 No control of modeling
 Captive raising
 Some is modeling – some is predisposition
 But birds will do this on their own
CEDP324 Ryan Sain, Ph.D. 4 3/30/2012

5. Language in nonhumans
 Uniquely human view
 Evolved a mechanism for language
 Intelligence view
 We are very intelligent
 Just require relevant experiences
 Sparks research in comparative cognition
CEDP324 Ryan Sain, Ph.D. 5 3/30/2012

6. Speech
 Extremely difficult to teach
 Very limited success
 Probably biological constraints
 ASL
 More success with chimps here
 Wider range of responses available
CEDP324 Ryan Sain, Ph.D. 6 3/30/2012

7. Evidence
 Kanzi
 Learned lexigrams (symbols)
 Learned to understand words
 Various tests
 Language?
 Great apes, grey parrots, dolphins, sea lions - vocabulary
 This is not language
 No syntax, no grammar
 Kanzi showed some evidence of this
CEDP324 Ryan Sain, Ph.D. 7 3/30/2012