OCR AS Psychology: Core Studies - Savage-Rumbaugh (7)

Results (Cont):

Kanzi produced 2540 correct combinations of symbols:

• More than 80% of Kanzi's single-word and combination utterances were spontaneous (learnt with no help).
• Only 11% (265 combinations) were prompted/imitated

At the age of 3 Kanzi, lead the experimenter around the 55 acre outdoor environment by correctly using the lexigram. However, he took he to the back fence because he recognised that she wasn't familiar. It seems as though Kanzi took advantage of the blind experimenter's naivete to go to places that he normally didn't get to travel. This test wasn't given to Mulika because she didn't like travelling without Kanzi.This is a good example of speech/language acquistion.The researcher's concluded that pygmy chimps can spontaneously acquire human language.There were 4 main differences identified between common and pygymy chimps.

• Kanzi and Mulika understood the lexigrams much easier than Austin and Sherman
• Kanzi and Mulika understood spoken English words much more than Austin and Sherman
• Kanzi and Mulika were much more explicit in their lexigram use - They differentiated between items
• Kanzi could make requests involving people other than himself e.g. "Sue chase Austin".