Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind (22 page)

Psychologists’ understanding of language acquisition in children had advanced significantly by the late 1970s. Earlier, the simplistic concept of language had prevailed, with its extraordinary emphasis on syntax as the sine qua non of language. The newer concept, which was being developed by ape-language studies as well as detailed investigations of parent-infant patterns of interaction, was beginning to place language in a social context. Here, language is viewed as “a highly complex set of behaviors that is acquired through joint interactions that involve the intertwining of words and actions between two or more individuals.”
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Both the results of the research with Sherman and Austin and new studies of children were suggesting that it was out of the
combination of context, social interaction, and social expectancy that the child or ape steadily built up an understanding of the words that were being used around him or her. This understanding included the discovery that words could be used to refer to things, events, feelings, and so on. That is to say, words could serve as arbitrary replacements for objects and events in conveyance of meaning. This new account of language acquisition for the first time placed a major emphasis on comprehension of words and sentences as a key component of language skill in apes.

The first attempts at language training with apes had ignored comprehension, assuming that production of symbols implied comprehension. Our work with Sherman and Austin had demonstrated the fallacy of that assumption. It made clear that while apes
could
come to comprehend symbols, the skill had to be put in place through experiences designed specifically to foster understanding. Simply teaching an ape the association between a word and a thing did not always result in the capacity to comprehend the intentions of others when they utilized the same word. The associations between word and referent too often ran in only one direction; the ape declared what it wished to have happen and expected the proper events to follow. When the tables were turned, and someone else announced what they wanted to have happen, it was found that these associations were not always reversible. Thus much of the ape’s understanding of language was limited to the ape as speaker.

Comprehending and producing language proved to be very different sorts of affairs. When apes produce symbols, they are attempting to affect the behavior of others—for example, to ask for a banana. When apes comprehend symbols directed toward themselves, they are expected to bring about the effect intended by the user of the symbols. Consequently, by focusing on the ability of Sherman and Austin to comprehend symbols, we were forced to develop paradigms in which the execution of the symbol and the ape’s receipt of some object or activity associated with that symbol became completely detached. This marked a dramatic break with all other ape-language efforts, and it led to the apes recognizing that symbols can be used to
communicate information about a specific object, event, or whatever without being tied to the occurrence of that event.

When Sherman and Austin reached this level of understanding of symbol use, we observed the spontaneous emergence of the capacity to use language to express future intentions. For the first time, it seemed that they really “had words”; that is, they understood that words could be used to express future intentions and thereby coordinate actions, rather than simply as a mechanism to get others to do something for them. Their ability to produce statements regarding their future intentions represented a profound advance in ape-language studies. Once apes could make statements about their intentions, and then carry out such statements appropriately, their behavior could no longer be explained by condition-response chains.

The work with Sherman and Austin had therefore set the stage for what we were to see in Kanzi in four ways: first, we had learned that “words” are more than simple associations between object and referent; second, we had learned that apes can appear to be able to produce relatively complex utterances without comprehending such utterances in the speech of others; third, we had discovered the importance of concentrating on language comprehension and the breaking down of the stimulus-response chains this entails; and fourth, we had found that comprehension leads to the ability to use language to make accurate and experimentally verifiable statements about intentions of future behavior.

We had thought that by working with a different species of ape we would gain further insights. Our initial results with Matata had not been encouraging, and Matata was fast approaching maturity. We hoped that perhaps, at some future time, we would be able to work with a young bonobo.

When Kanzi was six months old, this opportunity arrived. The Yerkes Great Ape Committee, which oversees the assignment of apes, assigned Kanzi to the Language Research Center as long
as he could remain with Matata while he participated in language studies. I was looking forward to working with Matata again, because I had formed a close and trusting relationship with her. I knew that she would be excited to be at the new and spacious laboratory that we had recently been blessed with—fifty-five acres of primary forest on Georgia State University land. I anticipated that Matata would welcome a chance to be in the forest once again and that our relationship could be readily renewed. However, I was uncertain as to how Kanzi would react.

Unlike Matata, Kanzi had never interacted with me before, and all of his friends had been bonobos. Shortly after Matata and Kanzi were settled in their new quarters, Matata gestured to ask me to come into the cage. I entered rather circumspectly, hoping not to startle Kanzi. As soon as I was within a few feet of his mother, though, Kanzi emitted a piercing scream and leapt into my arms from Matata’s ventrum, doing a midair acrobatic twist as he went. With his lips pulled back across both sides of his face, he looked directly at me, screaming with all the power his young six-month-old lungs could muster.

Having never been greeted by a bonobo infant before, I was uncertain how to interpret Kanzi’s actions. Because his screaming was so intense, I worried for an instant that Matata might view this excitement as a sign that I was scaring Kanzi. Even though I counted Matata as a friend, I expected her to be fiercely protective of Kanzi, and to bite me if she thought my behavior potentially warranted any such action. I stood there, with Kanzi’s arms and legs wrapped securely around my waist, trying to use all the nonverbal skills at my disposal to indicate to Matata that I was doing nothing bad to Kanzi in spite of the intense noise emanating from his small body.

I should not have worried. Matata understood Kanzi’s emotion far better than I and thought it perfectly acceptable that Kanzi should scream and leap away from her to give me such a boisterous greeting. She continued to observe us as Kanzi gradually calmed down and began to explore my face, hair, and clothing. He was particularly fascinated by my nose, which he seemed to note was distinctly different from those he
had been accustomed to seeing. This highly demonstrative greeting marked the beginning of what came to be a long and deep friendship between a human being who wanted to understand what it meant to be an ape and a bonobo who would strive with equal intensity in his own way to understand what it meant to be a human being.

The research plan laid out for Matata had been to pick up where her training had stopped several years back, when she was in our Yerkes laboratory with Sherman and Austin. We did not intend to work with Kanzi for some time, as six months was too young to begin any sort of systematic training. Consequently, Kanzi simply spent all day with Matata, doing whatever he could do to entertain himself.

Although Matata’s previous progress had been disappointing, she had learned how to tell one lexigram from another, which was an important first step toward using them for communication. She could also make a few requests, but she still did not respond appropriately to usages by others. Thus she could not select an apple from the refrigerator if asked to, but she could herself ask for apples in a limited sense.

We began a systematic teaching program using essentially the same computerized keyboard equipment we had previously employed with Sherman and Austin, and we introduced new symbols to Matata very slowly, so as not to confuse her. Matata was eager to learn. She appeared to recognize that we were attempting to use the symbols for the purpose of communication. She was also patient, which proved quite a valuable trait, as Kanzi was a hyperactive infant. He ran around the test room, jumped on Matata’s head, pushed her hand away from the keyboard as she tried to select the correct symbol, and stole the food she earned as a reward.

At times, Kanzi became mesmerized by the keyboard, staring at the symbols as they flashed onto the projectors at the top of the keyboard. He tried to grab each one just as it lit up, as though it was somehow crucial to catch it at just the moment it appeared. So occupied would he become with this activity that for ten or fifteen minutes nothing mattered to him except catching the symbols as they appeared. Then, he would turn and suddenly ignore them entirely, as if they did not exist.

Matata, like many other bonobo mothers, indulged Kanzi to the extreme. She made it plain that she did not approve if I or anyone else attempted to discipline Kanzi, regardless of the gravity of his mischievous behavior. She permitted him to behave in ways toward me that she would never consider doing herself. For example, if Kanzi was angry about anything that happened around, near, or with me or another person—regardless of whether we had anything to do with the situation—he was permitted to bite us. And we were supposed to ignore him, or better yet, distract him. It seemed that in Matata’s view, Kanzi, as an infant, could not and should not be held responsible for his own actions—much as we, in our culture, also do not hold children or animals responsible for their actions.

When he was about fourteen months of age, Kanzi began occasionally to press keys on the keyboard and then run to the vending machine as though he had grasped the idea that hitting keys produced food. However, he gave no discernible indication of understanding the relationship between specific keys and specific foods. Rather, his use of the symbols was generally sporadic and playful. By the time he was two years old, he started deliberately to select the “chase” symbol. He would look over the board, touch this symbol, then glance about to see if I had noticed and whether I would agree to chase him. If I answered yes, either by smiling, nodding my head, or saying “yes” on the keyboard, he would run off, looking back with a big play grin on his face. He also began to use the “chase” gesture (a hand clap), which he had seen Sherman and Austin use between themselves. We were pleased with Kanzi’s use of chase, but at that point did not recognize what this spontaneous learning portended for Kanzi’s future.

Despite Matata’s assiduous effort, and the systematic training program, she still did not progress as Sherman and Austin had. Able to communicate many things effectively through gestures, facial expressions, and vocalizations, she continued to be stumped by the keyboard. After two years of training and thirty thousand trials, she mastered only six symbols in a limited way. She could request things, but became confused when others
asked her to respond to their communications. She remained tied to the anticipated consequences of symbol usage. When we attempted to alter these, by switching from a request task to a naming task or a statement task, for example, Matata no longer selected the correct symbols. She did, however, continue to try to convey things using the keyboard, albeit in an incomprehensible manner—something like the “word salad” that Terrace had described for Nim. She would become very frustrated when I did not understand her, as she pointed to a symbol that seemed to have little to do with where her attention was focused. At times she would take my hand, look me in the eyes, and vocalize urgently, as if trying to explain what she wanted and wondering why I didn’t understand.

Matata differed from Sherman and Austin in other ways as well. For one thing, her ability to sort objects into recognizable categories was much less precise. She could sort only those objects that differed in many different dimensions, such as weight, color, shape, texture, and size. Objects that differed in only one way, such as color, were all grouped together. She was also unable to sort photographs—a favorite activity for Sherman and Austin. The inability to group photographs did not reflect an absence of picture-recognition skills, however, as looking at magazines was one of her favorite activities. She even sometimes “tasted” pictures of favorite fruits. By contrast, Sherman and Austin readily sorted objects that differed in one way, doing it first by color, then by shape, then by size, and so forth. They could sort photos into groups such as people, animals, tools, foods, and vehicles.