Kanzi's Primal Language

Author: P. Segerdahl
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230513387
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's work on the language capabilities of the bonobo Kanzi has intrigued the world because of its far-reaching implications for understanding the evolution of the human language. This book takes the reader behind the scenes of the filmed language tests. It argues that while the tests prove that Kanzi has language, the even more remarkable manner in which he originally acquired it - spontaneously, in a culture shared with humans - calls for a re-thinking of language, emphasizing its primal cultural dimensions.

Kanzi

Author: Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
Publisher: Trade Paper Press
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Book Description
t how close to the human mind this ape has come. "No other animal has done more to renew interest in animal intelligence"--Time 42 intriguing photos.

The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology

Author: Jaan Valsiner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521854105
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 672

Book Description
This book, first published in 2007, is an international overview of the state of our knowledge in sociocultural psychology - as a discipline located at the crossroads between the natural and social sciences and the humanities. Since the 1980s, the field of psychology has encountered the growth of a new discipline - cultural psychology - that has built new connections between psychology, sociology, anthropology, history and semiotics. The handbook integrates contributions of sociocultural specialists from fifteen countries, all tied together by the unifying focus on the role of sign systems in human relations with the environment. It emphasizes theoretical and methodological discussions on the cultural nature of human psychological phenomena, moving on to show how meaning is a natural feature of action and how it eventually produces conventional symbols for communication. Such symbols shape individual experiences and create the conditions for consciousness and the self to emerge; turn social norms into ethics; and set history into motion.

Chimpanzee Cultures

Author: Richard W. Wrangham
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674116634
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 454

Book Description
Compares and contrasts the ecology, social relations, and cognition of chimpanzees, bonobos, and occasionally, gorillas.

The Science of Learning

Author: Joseph J. Pear
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1317762797
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 548

Book Description
Growing at an ever-increasing pace for over a century, the solid body of concepts and facts that constitute the science of learning demand a comprehensive, systematic introduction. Completely up-to-date and written in a direct, easy-to-read style that is suitable for undergraduates, The Science of Learning is such an introduction. Because its focus is on what is known rather than what is speculated, this book differs from other learning texts by not dwelling on which theories are or are not in vogue. The text's comprehensive coverage makes it an ideal reference for more advanced scholars and specialists in learning and related fields.

Do Animals Think?

Author: Clive D. L. Wynne
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400849551
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Book Description
Does your dog know when you've had a bad day? Can your cat tell that the coffee pot you left on might start a fire? Could a chimpanzee be trained to program your computer? In this provocative book, noted animal expert Clive Wynne debunks some commonly held notions about our furry friends. It may be romantic to ascribe human qualities to critters, he argues, but it's not very realistic. While animals are by no means dumb, they don't think the same way we do. Contrary to what many popular television shows would have us believe, animals have neither the "theory-of-mind" capabilities that humans have (that is, they are not conscious of what others are thinking) nor the capacity for higher-level reasoning. So, in Wynne's view, when Fido greets your arrival by nudging your leg, he's more apt to be asking for dinner than commiserating with your job stress. That's not to say that animals don't possess remarkable abilities--and Do Animals Think? explores countless examples: there's the honeybee, which not only remembers where it found food but communicates this information to its hivemates through an elaborate dance. And how about the sonar-guided bat, which locates flying insects in the dark of night and devours lunch on the wing? Engagingly written, Do Animals Think? takes aim at the work of such renowned animal rights advocates as Peter Singer and Jane Goodall for falsely humanizing animals. Far from impoverishing our view of the animal kingdom, however, it underscores how the world is richer for having such a diversity of minds--be they of the animal or human variety.

Aping Language

Author: Joel Wallman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521406666
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
Language is regarded, at least in most intellectual traditions, as the quintessential human attribute, at once evidence and source of most that is considered transcendent in us, distinguishing ours from the merely mechanical nature of the beast. Even if language did not have the sacrosanct status it does in our conception of human nature, however, the question of its presence in other species would still promote argument, for we lack any universally accepted, defining features of language, ones that would allow us to identify it unequivocally ours from other species and contention over the crucial attributes of language are responsible for the stridency of the debate over whether nonhuman animals can learn language. Aping Language is a critical assessment of each of the recent experiments designed to impact a language, either natural or invented, to an ape. The performance of the animals in these experiments is compared with the course of semantic and syntactic development in children, both speaking and signing. The book goes on to examine what is known about the neurological, cognitive, and specifically linguistic attributes of our species that subserve language, and it discusses how they might have come into existence. Finally, the communication of nonhuman primates in nature is assayed to consider whether or not it was reasonable to assume, as the experimenters in these projects did, that apes possess an ability to acquire language.

Psychology

Author: Michael W. Eysenck
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9781841693613
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 984

Book Description
Unlike typical American texts, this book provides an international approach to introductory psychology, providing comprehensive and lively coverage of current research from a global perspective, including the UK, Germany, Scandinavia, Holland, Australia and Canada, as well as the USA.

Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution

Author: Kathleen Rita Gibson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521485418
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 506

Book Description
Looks at how humans have evolved complex behaviours such as language and culture.

Apes, Language, and the Human Mind

Author: Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198026978
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
Current primate research has yielded stunning results that not only threaten our underlying assumptions about the cognitive and communicative abilities of nonhuman primates, but also bring into question what it means to be human. At the forefront of this research, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh recently has achieved a scientific breakthrough of impressive proportions. Her work with Kanzi, a laboratory-reared bonobo, has led to Kanzi's acquisition of linguistic and cognitive skills similar to those of a two and a half year-old human child. Apes, Language, and the Human Mind skillfully combines a fascinating narrative of the Kanzi research with incisive critical analysis of the research's broader linguistic, psychological, and anthropological implications. The first part of the book provides a detailed, personal account of Kanzi's infancy, youth, and upbringing, while the second part addresses the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues raised by the Kanzi research. The authors discuss the challenge to the foundations of modern cognitive science presented by the Kanzi research; the methods by which we represent and evaluate the abilities of both primates and humans; and the implications which ape language research has for the study of the evolution of human language. Sure to be controversial, this exciting new volume offers a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind, and will be important reading for all those working in the fields of primatology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive and developmental psychology.