Reviews for Canopy Arthropods

The average rating for Canopy Arthropods based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-07-06 00:00:00 Joe Vince Reading critical studies of experimental results is enjoyable in the same way as reading literary criticism. As Tom Townsend puts it in Metropolitan, "this way you get both the [experimenter's] ideas as well as the critic's thinking". Wallman works through the major ape language studies (through the early 90s) and makes a convincing case that they show much much less than the experimenters themselves take them to show. He summarizes his conclusions as follows: "I should state that I do not believe that any of the ape-language projects succeeded in instilling even a degenerate version of a human language in an ape. There are no persuasive data in support of syntactic patterning. At best, one or more of the animals in these studies acquired an ability, or enhanced an inchoate one, to represent things with symbols. However, the evidence for even this capacity, a prerequisite for syntactic productivity, is equivocal" (p.109). As interesting as the ape studies are, I am glad that my research does not require listening to recordings of agonistic monkey screams (p.135).

Review # 2 was written on 2007-07-26 00:00:00 Ed Truchanowicz i watched a documentary about koko the gorilla last year that seemed to show very convincingly that koko could communicate in sign language. i read a more sceptical discussion of the ability of great apes to learn language somewhere recently, though (i forget where, unfortunately), and somebody recommended this book. it's a review of all the ape language studies (before the 1990s, when the book was written, at least) and is very critical of the experimental design and analysis. it also reviews some of the literature on language development in children, in order to compare the two fields. the author does not believe that non-human apes have the capacity for language and does a thorough job of rebutting the claims to the contrary by showing that the use of signs or symbols can be explained as conditioned responses, rather than meaningful communication. it took me a while to start reading, because it is rather technical, but i found it very interesting.