dogs and language
Jan. 20th, 2011 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitouthttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/science/18dog.html
Elderly scientist teaches border collie over a hundred words, mostly nouns but also some verbs. Controlled for "Clever Hans" problem (animal reading human gesture rather than understanding the language).
My primary complaint is here:
"Chaser learns to link sounds to objects by brute repetition, which is not how children learn words. And she learns her words as proper nouns, which are specific labels for things, rather than as abstract concepts like the common nouns picked up by children."
Someone needs to talk to people who work with helping autistic children learn language.
Elderly scientist teaches border collie over a hundred words, mostly nouns but also some verbs. Controlled for "Clever Hans" problem (animal reading human gesture rather than understanding the language).
My primary complaint is here:
"Chaser learns to link sounds to objects by brute repetition, which is not how children learn words. And she learns her words as proper nouns, which are specific labels for things, rather than as abstract concepts like the common nouns picked up by children."
Someone needs to talk to people who work with helping autistic children learn language.