Word: psychologistic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...exalted place in the universe. Moreover, scientists have historic reasons to be skeptical of claims concerning animal intelligence. At the turn of the century, a wonder horse named Clever Hans wowed Europeans with his apparent ability to solve math problems, expressing his answers by tapping a hoof. Dutch psychologist Oskar Pfungst ultimately showed that Hans was merely responding to inadvertent cues from his human handlers, who, for instance, would visibly relax when the horse had tapped the proper number of times. When blindfolded by Pfungst, Hans ceased to be so clever...
...grammatical abilities of a 2 1/2-year-old child and a taste for movies about cavemen. The 12-year-old pygmy chimpanzee lives with a colony of other apes in a cage complex on the wooded campus of the Georgia State University Language Research Center, near Atlanta. Under the tutelage of psychologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, he makes his desires known either by pointing to symbols printed on a laminated board or by punching the symbols on a special keyboard that then generates the words in English. While Kanzi cannot speak (apes lack the vocal control to form words), he understands spoken language...
Kanzi's most noteworthy achievement has been to demonstrate a grasp of grammatical concepts such as word order. Savage-Rumbaugh and psychologist Rose Sevcik created an extended experiment to compare the ape with a two-year-old girl named Alia in responding to commands expressed in 660 spoken English sentences. The sentences combined objects in ways that Kanzi and Alia were unlikely to have encountered before: "Put the melon in the potty," or "Go get the carrot that's in the microwave...
Unfortunately, it is impossible to know precisely what goes on in another creature's mind and to what degree it understands the languages it uses. Take the case of the gorilla Koko, first taught 20 years ago to use American Sign Language by psychologist Penny Patterson. On one much discussed occasion, the powerful gorilla had inadvertently knocked a sink off its moorings in her living quarters. Koko signed the words "Kate there bad," pointing to the sink. Was the muscular animal trying, rather implausibly, to shift the blame to one of Patterson's slightly built female assistants...
...lend her money because she's a single woman. Indians in Dr. Quinn are not hostile, just misunderstood; a hawker of phony patent medicines turns out to be a surgeon who grew disillusioned after witnessing battlefield carnage during the Civil War. Seymour, as the town's doctor, psychologist, police force and environmental chemist rolled into one, is the biggest anachronism of all. But a right purty...