BIO-BEHAVIORAL STUDIES OF LANGUAGE AND COGNITION

该计划由四个项目组成，旨在定义 语言和语言习得的过程。 动物模型 该项目的总体目标是研究普通黑猩猩的潜力， (Pan穴居人）和侏儒黑猩猩（潘paniscus）学习和使用 各种功能中的指称技巧和交际概念 语境，并在这样做获得更好的理解语言，其 功能、发展和认知基础。 第二个项目 将动物模型项目中的原理融入研究中， 设计，以确定它们是否是唯一有效的促进语言 获得的人谁凭借serere和深刻的弱智， 没有学到任何重要的语言。 第三个项目强调 基于我们多年来开发的计算机系统， 促进维持既定语言功能的手段， 他们的有效应用/推广范围，和教学新的 功能协调发展的 第四个项目涉及大脑功能的问题， 尤其是功能的偏侧性。 语言能力是否体现在 我们的研究对象反映了侧化，以及功能的侧化（如果 现存的）是最初存在的还是在语言学习过程中发展起来的 将被研究。

The program consists of four projects directed toward definition of requisites to language and the processes of language acquisition. The animal model project's general goal is to investigate the potential of the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and the pygmy chimpanzee (Pan paniscus) to learn and to use referential skills and communicative concepts in a variety of functional contexts and in so doing gain a better understanding of language, its functioning, its development, and its cognitive basis. A second project incorporates the principles derived from the animal model project into research designs to determine whether they are uniquely effective in fostering language acquisition in persons who by virtue of servere and profound retardation have not learned language to any significant degree. A third project places emphasis upon the computer-based system which we have developed across the years as a means of facilitating the maintenance of established language functions, testing their ranges of effective application/generalization, and teaching new functions. A fourth project addresses questions of brain function and laterality of function in particular. Whether the language skills manifested by our subjects reflect laterality and whether that laterality of function (if extant) is there initially or developed through the course of language learning will be studied.