|
FROM THE EARLIEST anecdotes -- Washoe the chimpanzee as a toddler, racing for the potty chair, her hands repeatedly forming the word "Hurry!" in American Sign Language -- to those at the end, like the image of a mature Washoe smelling the fragrant long-stemmed roses she has received for her birthday, then eating them petal by petal, Roger Fouts's Next of Kin is an illuminating, stimulating, challenging and humane story. Fouts, a pioneer in the studies of apes and language acquisition, and his co-author, Stephen Tukel Mills, have seamlessly joined science and natural history with the rather personal journey of a psychologist whose life was forever changed by chimpanzees. In 1967, Fouts was accepted into the PhD program at the University of Nevada at Reno, hoping to become a child psychologist. But the graduate assistantship he was chosen for changed all that. Experimental psychologists Allen and Beatrix Gardner were trying to teach ASL to a young, home-reared chimpanzee named Washoe; though they were hesitant about Fouts, Washoe announced, by hugging him, that she was not. Teaching language to chimps was not a novel idea, but the Gardners' approach was.
Approximate Word count = 721
Approximate Pages = 2.9
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
