Word: psychologist
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Perhaps the most impressive claims came from Francine Patterson, a psychologist at Stanford, who said she had managed to teach a hulking female gorilla named Koko more than 400 signs. According to Patterson, the gifted ape then proceeded to higher linguistic levels by using word combinations to insult her trainers (You nut), compose rhymes (bear hair, squash wash) and invent metaphors (eye hat for mask, finger bracelet for ring...
...done more to stir doubts than Columbia University Psychologist Herbert Terrace in his work with little Nim (full name: Nim Chimpsky, a play on the name of Linguist Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a staunch proponent of the idea that language ability is biologically unique to humans). The object of Terrace's experiment was to prove Chomsky wrong -to show that creatures other than man could, indeed, conquer syntax and link words into sentences, however simple...
...passes for language skill in apes can be explained by the "Clever Hans effect"-a phenomenon named for a turn-of-the-century German circus horse that astounded audiences by tapping out with his hoofs the correct answers to complex mathematical and verbal problems. In fact, as a German psychologist finally discerned, Clever Hans was picking up unintentional cues-changes in facial expression, breathing patterns and even eye-pupil size-from his questioner telling him when and how many times to stomp (or, more precisely, when to stop stomping...
...other canyon residents worked desperately to save their property. In Mandeville Canyon, Beverly Hills Psychologist Philip Flexo and his wife Pat shoveled day and night to divert a stream of mud and water from their $250,000 home. No matter what happened to the house, Flexo vowed not to leave the canyon permanently. Said he: "We moved here to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Despite the fires, rains, flood and muds, I won't move...
...depth of the violence is incomprehensible to me as a human being and as a psychologist. It is as if all the aggression a human being can have was savagely unleashed. We just can't understand why they did this to each other...