A sign of the antiquity of body language and its
supremacy
over the spoken word has come from the studies of
a husband and wife team of researchers, R. Allen and
Beatrice T. Gardner of the University of Nevada.
Pondering the many failures of psychologists to
teach
the anthropoid apes to speak, the Gardners decided
to try
gestures instead. Body language is a natural part of
all
animal behaviour, they reasoned, and apes are
familiar
enough with body language to learn to use gestures
for
communication. This is particularly true of
anthropoid
apes, because they are imitative and manually
dextrous.
The Gardners decided to teach a young female
chimpanzee named Washoe the sign language used by
the
deaf in North America. The chimp was given the
freedom
of the Gardner house along with toys and large doses
of
tender loving care, and she was surrounded by humans
who used only sign language to communicate.
Washoe, in true chimp fashion, very quickly imitated
her human friends' sign-language gestures, but it
took
months of patient work before she could reproduce
them
on command. She was urged to ' speak up' by touching
her hand, and any 'faulty diction' was improved by
repeating the
sign in an exaggerated way. When Washoe
learned a sign correctly she was rewarded with
tickling.
If she was forced to work too hard, she would rebel
by
running away or throwing a tantrum or by biting her teacher's hand.
After two years of patient work, Washoe learned
about thirty signs. She was judged to have learned a
sign
if she used it of her own accord in a proper fashion
at
least once each day for fifteen days. Washoe learned
to
bring her fingertips over her head to signal 'more',
to
shake her open hand at the wrist for 'hurry' and to
draw
her palm across her chest for 'please'.
She also learned the signs for hat, shoes, trousers
and
other articles of clothing, and the signs for baby,
dog and
cat. Surprisingly enough, she used these latter
signs for
new babies, dogs or cats when she met them. Once she
even used the sign for dog when she heard a bark.
She
has also invented some simple sentences: 'Go sweet'
when she wants to be carried to a raspberry bush,
and
'Open food drink' when she wants something from the
refrigerator.
The experiment is still continuing, and Washoe is
learning new gestures and putting them into new
sentences.
The old Dr Dolittle idea of talking to the animals
may yet be possible with body language.
However, some blase naturalists point out that body
language among animals is no new thing. Birds signal
sexual willingness by elaborate courtship dances,
bees
signal the direction of a honey supply by involved
flight
patterns and dogs will indulge in a host of signals
from
rolling over and playing dead to sitting up and
begging
for food.
What is new in the case of Washoe is the teaching of
a
language to an animal, and the animal's initiation
of signs
in that language. It is logical that the deaf sign
language
should have succeeded where a spoken language
failed.
Loss of hearing and the cutting off of the world of
sound
apparently make an individual much more sensitive to
the
world of gestures and motions. If this is so, then
someone
who is deaf should have a more sensitive
understanding of
body
language.
