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Talking chimpanzee1/2/2024 Skinner, known for his theories in operant behavior. There, he studied under the famed psychologist B.F. in experimental psychology from Cornell, and a Ph.D. The Brooklyn-raised Terrace, who has worked at Columbia since 1961, earned a B.A. Well, if you look at what’s on their screens, they’re typing Shakespeare.” “There’s an expression, if you leave a monkey at a typewriter long enough, they’ll eventually type Shakespeare. Terrace is speaking from his office in Schermerhorn Hall where, on the wall opposite his desk, in winking recognition of his life’s work, hangs a large print of monkeys - many, many monkeys - sitting before computers. Or as he puts it, “how we got to the first word.” And he has focused much of his career since developing a theory that explains how humans arrived at language when simians did not. Terrace famously came to this conclusion in the 1970s, after a three-year study that involved teaching sign language to a chimpanzee. It’s natural.”īut to Terrace’s mind, the tendency can cloud people’s judgment as it relates to his work, which is grounded in the conviction that nonhuman primates are incapable of using language like humans. I think that’s because, in addition to language, we also became very empathic, so we tend to project our feelings onto the animal as if it’s just another part of the family. “We’re ingenious at it - Aesop’s Fables, Doctor Doolittle - it’s reinforced everywhere a child looks, more films and books about talking to the animals. Not that the psychologist is unsympathetic to the impulse. If Herbert Terrace had his way, before any discussion about his research in the evolution of language, he would put everyone into a room for a quick lesson in breaking the habit of anthropomorphism.
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