Savage Rumbaugh

Aim: To study language acquisition in two pygmy chimps and compare this to 2 common chimps

Participants

• 2 pygmy chimps
• Kanzi aged 4
• Mulika aged 3 ( Kanzi's sister)
• 2 common chimps sherman and austin
• aged 9 and 10

Method:

• Longitudinal study
• 17 month period
• Quasi experiment
• IV species DV language Accquisition
• types of communication Lexigram, Pointing board for outside, spoken english and gestures

Results

• Kanzi and Mulika were for more able to understand spoken english words
• Kanzi and mulika used lexigram with more ease and more spontaneously without training compared to Sherman and Austin

Conclusions

• Pgymy Chimps exhibit symbolic and auditory perceptual skills that are significantly different to those of common chimpanzees. This is suprising as they are closely related