Keller and Koko

As a student, in discussions among philosophers, psychologists and students, nothing that I was ever told or heard about Helen Keller was clear enough about one known fact: that she was almost two years old when stricken blind and deaf.

I say "almost two" because in this instance - for the case of hearing - I am counting the last few months of gestation.

The child had been exposed to human speech and to its role in affection, play, nourishment and multiple other aspects of the life of the neonate, infant and toddler.

Now I find that I must look for details of Koko, Washoe and Nim.  The latter spent most of the first year of life in a laboratory.  While Washoe lived with a family, I find myself wanting to know about her first months.

I recall that during the first months of life, Bonobo infants and human infants appear to follow a similar developmental pattern.  Some apes used in language acquisition experiments had been the victims of poaching, but for some reason I recall Nim "Chimsky" as having been born in captivity.  But after months in a laboratory, what was the structure of his behavior in interactions with his human keepers?  From a group of randomly selected toddlers, would he have been within  1 sd of the norm for his cohorts from normal ape family groups?

At least one street urchin has gone on to win prizes in science, but we seem to now recognize the importance of the first years of life if a human is to thrive.  This is a recent development in western civilization.

Perhaps comparable - for students of philosophy - are the first reports of the visual world of those blinded by cataracts upon the restoration of sight, a topic reviewed by Oliver Sachs in "An Anthropologist on Mars".

But if we had discovered the use of syntax in Nim, surely our efforts to save Orang habitat in Sumatra would have been redoubled.  Without some other primate species which buries their dead, the lesser primates are likely doomed to have their natural worlds expropriated by the dominant species.

related: Great Ape Trust