BIO-BEHAVIORAL STUDIES OF LANGUAGE AND COGNITION

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This program of research with children and primates is comprised of six interlocking projects designed to explored the roots of competence for language and planning, for complex learning and cognition, for behavioral and object constructions, are basic to human competence throughout life and are at risk for development in the child with brain damage. The development of animal models appropriate to long-term research on these dimensions of competence is important and promises to be advanced by progress to date and the proposed science program. The potential for appropriate models is significantly advanced by the Language Research Center's discovery that the bonobo (Pan paniscus), and to a lesser degree the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), can come to comprehend words of human speech at a level that approximates a 2-1/2 year old child if they are reared from birth in an environment that emphasizes language. They also spontaneously comprehend word-lexigrams and their appropriate use. As is true for the human child, Pan appears to be uniquely sensitive to conditions of its rearing from birth so far as the spontaneous acquisitions of language and the declaration of other dimensions of competence are concerned. Accordingly, one project, in collaboration with the NIH, now proposes to search for the neurological sites of Pan's brain that are activated as speech is heard and word-lexigrams are used (see Science core, "SPECT Imaging..."). Collectively, all projects should contribute to a better understanding of development both for normal and specials populations; in some instances, projects might yield better methods of ameliorating deficits in competence. This program is made possible, in many ways, because of computer-based, video-formatted technological advances of this Center.