Beatrix Tugendhut Gardner (July 13, 1933 – June 5, 1995) was an Austrian
zoologist
Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...
who became well known for the research that she conducted in the United States. She is most well known for her sign language studies with
Washoe the chimpanzee, who was the first ape to learn sign language.
Early life and education
Gardner was born on July 13, 1933 in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, Austria.
She lived in Poland during Nazi rule, and moved with her family to a suburb in
São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...
, Brazil, to escape the Nazis.
She and her family remained in Brazil for six years,
at which point Beatrix moved to the United States to attend school.
Beatrix, often spelled "Beatrice", attended
Radcliffe College
Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...
in
and received her
bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...
in 1954.
In 1956, she earned her
master's degree
A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice. from
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
,
working with
Carl Pfaffman. She completed her
PhD in zoology at
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
in 1959 where she studied under the mentorship of
Niko Tinbergen
Nikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen (; ; 15 April 1907 – 21 December 1988) was a Dutch biologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning the or ...
.
Her focus was studying food deprivation and feeding response in
stickleback fish.
Career
She used her
ethological
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objective ...
training background and applied it to
psychobiology at
Wellesley College
Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...
, where she was hired to teach after Oxford.
At Wellesley, she began studying children in comparison to adults, specifically with regard to their head shape. She found that a continuous transformation in head profile shape was an effective factor in determining how a person judged the "babyishness" of a head.
At Wellesley, Beatrice met
Allen Gardner Allen, Allen's or Allens may refer to:
Buildings
* Allen Arena, an indoor arena at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee
* Allen Center, a skyscraper complex in downtown Houston, Texas
* Allen Fieldhouse, an indoor sports arena on the Univ ...
. They met when they both attended a talk being given by
Harry Harlow
Harry Frederick Harlow (October 31, 1905 – December 6, 1981) was an American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation, dependency needs, and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which manifested the importance of caregi ...
on his studies of contact comfort in infant
rhesus macaque
The rhesus macaque (''Macaca mulatta''), colloquially rhesus monkey, is a species of Old World monkey. There are between six and nine recognised subspecies that are split between two groups, the Chinese-derived and the Indian-derived. Generally b ...
monkeys.
In 1961, they married, and in 1963 they both took positions at the
University of Nevada, Reno
The University of Nevada, Reno (Nevada, the University of Nevada, or UNR) is a public land-grant research university in Reno, Nevada. It is the state's flagship public university and primary land grant institution. It was founded on October 12, ...
. There, Beatrice continued to use her ethological training and studied the effects of food deprivation in
jumping spiders
Jumping spiders are a group of spiders that constitute the family Salticidae. As of 2019, this family contained over 600 described genera and over 6,000 described species, making it the largest family of spiders at 13% of all species. Jumping spi ...
and predatory jumping spider behavior.
In 1966, the Gardner and her husband acquired a 10-month-old chimpanzee that they named
Washoe,
who was named after the county in Nevada that they lived in. Gardner would become most well remembered for the work that she did with Washoe. Washoe was originally obtained by the
US Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
to use as a part of their
space program
A space program is an organized effort by a government or a company with a goal related to outer space.
Lists of space programs include:
* List of government space agencies
* List of private spaceflight companies
* List of human spaceflight prog ...
, but she instead was sent to Gardner to participate in her study, which would try to teach Washoe
American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
(ASL).
Language learning with apes
Prior to Gardner's work with Washoe, there had been no successful teaching of language to any apes. There had been a couple of failed attempts at teaching vocal language to chimpanzees. Keith and Catherine Hayes attempted to teach an infant chimpanzee named
Viki how to speak. At the end of their study, Viki was only able to form four words, and mostly they came out as sounds that she was able to mimic on command. This method of teaching language to apes lacked ethological validity, which Gardner was able to bring to the table, thanks to her background training from working with Niko Tinbergen. Together with her husband and a team of researchers that worked around the clock to raise Washoe using only ASL, Dr. Gardner was successful in teaching Washoe to use 250 different ASL signs,
and she was able to use them in novel configurations.
Due to the success of the project, Gardner continued to expand it by obtaining four infant chimpanzees named Moja, Pili, Tatu, and Dar. Gardner wanted to begin the sign language training from younger than 10 months old, which was Washoe's age when she was first acquired. She also wanted to raise these infant apes alongside each other to determine whether cultural transmission of signing would occur, or whether the apes would use sign language to communicate with one another.
At this point, Washoe moved to the Institute of Primate Studies in
Norman
Norman or Normans may refer to:
Ethnic and cultural identity
* The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries
** People or things connected with the Norm ...
, Oklahoma, under the care of Roger and Deborah Fouts,
who were two of the original researchers that had helped to raise Washoe. In 1980, Washoe moved with the Fouts to
Ellensburg
Ellensburg is a city in and the county seat of Kittitas County, Washington, United States. It is located just east of the Cascade Range near the junction of Interstate 90 and Interstate 82. The population was 18,666 at the 2020 census. and was ...
, Washington, where she lived out her life until she died in 2007 at the age of 42.
Controversy
There were several skeptics of the language training that Gardner was working on with Washoe. Not everyone believed that Washoe was truly using "language".
Rather, they believed that Washoe was communicating using symbols that she associated with specific rewards, and they claimed that is why she would not use them conversationally.
Herbert Terrace
Herbert S. Terrace (born 29 November 1936) is a Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Columbia University. His work covers a broad set of research interests that include behaviorism, animal cognition, ape language and the evolution of langu ...
, a
cognitive scientist at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, attempted to replicate the success of Washoe's training with another chimpanzee named
Nim Chimpsky
Neam "Nim" Chimpsky (November 19, 1973 – March 10, 2000) was a chimpanzee and the subject of an extended study of animal language acquisition at Columbia University. The project was led by Herbert S. Terrace with the linguistic analysis head ...
. Nim was able to learn ASL, but was raised in a true "laboratory" environment. This meant that instead of being raised in a nurturing and affectionate environment that many would argue is essential for human child development (and how Washoe was raised), Nim was raised in a controlled environment that lacked this component. Terrace claimed that Nim never spontaneously produced signs, nor did he use any grammar rules while signing. He was only able to communicate for food rewards.
Honors and awards
Gardner became the president of the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association in 1994. She received the University of Reno National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award. She was also a
Sigma Xi
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society () is a highly prestigious, non-profit honor society for scientists and engineers. Sigma Xi was founded at Cornell University by a junior faculty member and a small group of graduate students in 1886 ...
National Lecturer.
Personal life
Gardner had no children. She died while traveling in Italy with her husband at the age of 61 due to
sepsis
Sepsis, formerly known as septicemia (septicaemia in British English) or blood poisoning, is a life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs. This initial stage is follo ...
, and she left no immediate survivors other than her husband, Allen Gardner (1930–2021).
Publications
* Tugendhat, B. (1960). The normal feeding behavior of the three-spinded stickleback. ''Behaviour'', 15, 284–318.(a)
* Tugendhat, B. (1960). The distributed feeding behavior of the three-spinded stickleback: I. Electric shock is administered in the food area. ''Behaviour'', 16, 159–187.(b)
* Gardner, B. T., & Wallach, L. (1966). Shapes of figures identified as a baby's head. ''Perceptual and Motor Skills'', 20, 135–142.
* Gardner, B. T. (1966). Hunger and characteristics of the prey in the hunting behavior of salticid. ''Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology'', 62, 475–478.
* Gardner RA, Van Cantfort TE, Gardner BT. 1992. Categorical replies to categorical questions by cross-fostered chimpanzees. ''The American Journal of Psychology''. 105: 27–57.
* Drumm P, Gardner BT, Gardner RA. 1968. Vocal and gestural responses of cross-fostered chimpanzees. ''The American Journal of Psychology''. 99: 1–29.
* Gardner BT, Gardner RA. 1985. Signs of intelligence in cross-fostered chimpanzees. ''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London''. Series B, Biological Sciences. 308: 159–76.
* Gardner RA, Gardner BT. 1984. A vocabulary test for chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). ''Journal of Comparative Psychology'' (Washington, D.C.: 1983). 98: 381–404.
* Gardner RA, Gardner BT. 1978. Comparative psychology and language acquisition. ''Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences''. 309: 37–76.
* Gardner RA, Gardner BT. 1975. Early signs of language in child and chimpanzee. ''Science''. 187: 752–3.
* Gardner RA, Gardner BT. 1969. Teaching sign language to a chimpanzee. ''Science''. 165: 664–72.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gardner, Beatrix Tugendhut
1933 births
1995 deaths
Radcliffe College alumni
Austrian zoologists
20th-century American zoologists
Women zoologists
Scientists from Vienna
Brown University alumni
Alumni of the University of Oxford
Austrian emigrants to the United States
Austrian expatriates in Poland
Austrian expatriates in Brazil