Sometimes, when my mother was very tired, her words would fail her and she would sign to me and my sisters instead. Usually she only ever got as far as signing “stop”—open palm, one hand coming down ...

Back in the 1970s, a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky took part in a Columbia University research study called "Project Nim." Project Nim was led by Herbert Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia who was ...

SPOKANE, Wash. Washoe, a female chimpanzee believed to be the first non-human to acquire human language, has died of natural causes at the research institute where she was kept. Washoe, who first ...

ELLENSBURG, Wash. - A chimpanzee who could talk to people using American Sign Language has died at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. The university's Chimpanzee and Human Communication ...

Washoe was 10 months old when her foster parents began teaching her to talk, and five months later they were already trumpeting her success. Not only had she learned words; she could also string them ...

Allen Gardner, whose groundbreaking research along with his late wife Beatrix “Trixie” Gardner involving the chimpanzee Washoe made worldwide headlines when Washoe became the first nonhuman to learn ...

Ethologist Robert Allen Gardner, who gained fame in the late 1960s for his work with a chimpanzee named Washoe, died on August 20 at the Reno ranch where much of his research was conducted. He and his ...

How can one teach language to a chimpanzee who is unable to produce the basic sounds of spoken language (phonemes)? Extensive research has shown they can’t. Two approaches, each using a visual ...

Our attempts to communicate with our ape cousins with sign language have long captured our imagination, but surprising new research shows that chimpanzees and bonobos share common gestures and ...

He and his wife and collaborator made headlines with their finding that they could communicate with a young ape using the language of the deaf. By Sam Roberts Washoe was 10 months old when her foster ...

How can one teach language to a chimpanzee who is unable to produce the basic sounds of spoken language (phonemes)? Extensive research has shown that they cannot. On one project, discussed in my last ...