Unit Seven
Gorillas Orangutans
Gorillas are the largest of the living primates. They are ground-dwelling and
predominantly herbivorous. They inhabit the forests of central Africa. Gorillas are
divided into two species and (still under debate as of 2008) either four or five
subspecies. The DNA of gorillas is 98%–99% identical to that of a human, and they
are the next closest living relatives to humans after the two chimpanzee species.
The orangutans are the only exclusively Asian living genus of great ape. They are
among the most intelligent primates and use a variety of sophisticated tools, also
making sleeping nests each night from branches and foliage. They are generally not
aggressive and live a mostly solitary life. They have longer arms than other great apes.
Their hair is typically reddish-brown, instead of the brown or black hair typical of
other great apes.
American’s Ideas of Animals
English speaking people attached different ideas on animals through the use of
language, especially idioms, which may different from Chinese culture. For example,
in Chinese, dragon represents majesty and authority, while in English, dragon is often
associated with evil and ferocity. In Chinese, dog is often associated with loyalty
while in English language, dog is more related to some derogatory sense, just as used
in the following idioms: ―a dog in the manger‖, ―a sly dog‖ and ―Every dog has his
day‖.
Now, more and more people are fond of animals or pets, which has becoming one
element of American culture. America’s cultural pendulum has swung toward pets.
According to the American Pet Products Association (APPA), 62% of U.S.
households own a pet, and most are willing to spend vast amounts of time and money
to keep pets happy. The pet industry has tripled in the past 15 years. In 2009 pet
spending has reached about $45.4 billion.
The Experiment of Teaching Sign Language to Animals
Over the past fifty or so years, several attempts have been made to teach human
language to chimpanzee. The first experiment was a failure. An animal named Gua
was acquired by Professor and Ms Kellogg in 1931, when she was 7 months old. She
was brought up as she was a human baby, and was fed with a spoon, bathed, pinned
up in nappies, and continuously exposed to speech. Although she eventually managed
to understand the meaning of over seventy single words, she never spoke. A second
chimp acquired by Keith and Cathy Hayes in 1947 also proved disappointing. It is
now clear why there attempt failed. Chimps are not physic-logically capable of
uttering human sounds. More recent experiments have avoided this trap and used
other media, for example, sign language.
One famous example is Washoe. She is a female chimp acquired by Professor and Ms
Gardner in 1966, when she was about a year old. She has been taught to use modified
American Sign Language (ASL). In this system sign stands for words. For example,
Washoe’s word for ―sweet‖ is made by putting her finger on the top of her tongue,
while wagging the tongue. The Gardeners kept her continuously surrounded by
humans who communicated with her and each other by signs. Her progress was
impressive and, at least in the early stages. It seems that her language development
was not unlike that of a human child.
First, Washoe’s speech clearly had the semantic tendency, which is the use of
symbols to refer to objects and actions. She had no difficulty in understanding that a
sign means a certain object or action. She could make her sign for ―flower‖ (holding
the fingertips of one hand together and touching the nostril with them) when she was
walking toward a flower garden, and another time when she was shown a picture of
flowers.
Also, Washoe could also generalize from one situation to another. Like all chimps,
she loved being tickled and would use the gesture of ―more‖ when being tickled. At
first the sign was specific to the tickling situation. Later she used it to request
continuation of another favorite activity. She eventually extended the ―more‖ sign to
feeding and other activities that she liked very much. However, most impressive of all
was Washoe’s creativity—her apparently spontaneous use of combinations of signs.
She produced two-and-three word sequence of her own inventions, such as GIMME
TICKLE (come and tickle me), GO SWEET (take me the raspberry bushes‖ and so on.
When she grew so large and potentially dangerous, the Gardners were obliged to send
her to live at a primate station. The research stopped.
Another experiment about sign language of animal evolves Nim Chimpsky, a male
chimpanzee, which was for several years under the care of Terrace at Columbia
University, New Work. Data about his sign language was recorded. It was found that
of the 20,000 recorded signs, nearly half were two-sign combinations, and 1,378 were
different. For example, of the two-sign utterances including the word MORE, 78
percent had MORE at the beginning as in MORE TICKLE, MORE DRINK. It
seemed that this kind of phenomenon is similar to being structure-dependency, but
this kind of structure-dependency is far less sophisticated from human language.
Furthermore, He was found to not able to grasp the give-and-take of conversation, and
his signing showed no evidence of turn taking.
In general, Terrace did not regard Him used his signs in the high sophisticated
structured, creative, social way that is characteristic of human language.
Behaviorism
Behaviorism is built on this assumption that ―behave is what organisms do‖, and its
goal is to promote the scientific study of behaviour. Loosely speaking, behaviorism is
an attitude. Strictly speaking, behaviorism is a doctrine. A behaviorist, so understood,
is a psychological theorist who demands behavioral evidence for any psychological
hypothesis. Behaviour can be described and explained without making ultimate
reference to mental events or to internal psychological processes. The sources of
behavior are external (in the environment), not internal (in the mind, in the head).
In language study, Skinner was one dominant figure in advocating behaviorism. His
claim to understand language was based on his work with rats and pigeons. He had
proved that, given time, rats and pigeons could be trained to perform an amazing
variety of seemingly complex tasks, provided two basic principles were followed.
First, the tasks must be broken down into a number of carefully graduated steps.
Second, the animals must be repeatedly rewarded. In a typical experiment, a rat is put
in a box containing a bar. If it presses the bar, it is rewarded with a pellet of food.
Nothing forces it to press the bar. The first time it possibly does by accident. When
the rat finds that food arrives, it presses the bar again. Eventually it learns that if it is
hungry, it can obtain food by pressing the bar. Then the action is made more difficult
again. The rat only gets rewarded if it presses the bar while a light is flashing. At first,
the rat is puzzled. Eventually it learns the trick. Then the task is made more difficult
again. This time the rat only receive food if is presses the bar a certain number of
times. After initial confusion, it learns to do this also. And so on, and so on.
Behaviorism has lost strength and influence. It is dismissed by cognitive scientists
developing intricate internal information processing models of cognition. Its
laboratory routines are neglected by cognitive psychologists who are convinced that
its methods are irrelevant to studying how animals and persons behave in their natural
and social environment. Its traditional relative indifference toward neuroscience and
deference to environmental contingencies is rejected by neuroscientists who thinks
that direct study of the brain is the only way to understand the causes of behavior.
Time, University of Tenesmus, the City of Seattle
Time (时代周刊）, a periodical journal published in American, is considered to rank
the most authoritative journals in the world. It was wounded in 1923 by Henry R.
Luce. This journal intends to let the public know what happening in the world. It
covers a wild range of topic, such as politics, business, art, travel, etc, and is called the
―world tank‖. It is the first journal to use the narrative form for reporting the current
affairs. The readers for the journal are mainly middle class and intellectuals. At the
end of each year, the Time journal will issue the ―Person of the Year‖, who is thought
to have world-wild significance. The ―Person of the Year‖ of 2009 is Ben Burnable,
the Federal Reserve chairman of the United States. The ―Person of the Year‖ of 2008
is Barack Obama, the president of the Unites States now. More information about the
journal of Time can be find from the following website: http://www.time.com/time/.
The University of Tennessee mainly refers to the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
It was founded in 1794 and is the best university of the Tennessee state. UT Knoxville
has eleven colleges benefiting from more than 1,400 faculties and offers more than
300-degree programs. UT Knoxville ranks among the nation's top public universities.
The leading subjects of UT Knoxville are about engineering science and agriculture
science. Besides University of Tennessee Knoxville, the University of Tenessee
system also includes the campus in Chattanooga and Martin. More information about
the university can be found in the following website: http://www.utk.edu/aboutut/.
The City of Seattle is one of the largest cites in northwest America, located in Washington State. It
covers an area of 369.2 kilometers, 41.16% of which is water. The population is about 3.91
million, among which the number of while people is up to 70.1%, black 8.4%, American Indians
& aboriginal 1.0%, Hispanics or Latins 5.3%, Asian American 13.1%. The name of the city can be
dated back to Chief Seattle, which is associated with American Indians. The main landmarks for
this city are Space Needle and Seattle Center and the most famous festival in this city is Seattle
International Film Festival. It used to be headquarter of the famous Boeing company and is thus
called the ―Jet City‖.