http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/story/2012-04-12/baboons-reading/54213126/1?csp=34news
The reason for posting the article is just food for thought I suppose.
Here’s my thinking:
My dog, when just a few weeks old, learned very quickly that items had names or words associated with them. My little Shih Tzu could go fetch the exact toy I asked, and all we did is a simple drill a few times where I would continually repeat the toy’s name while we played with it, and later on, while she sat and watched, I lined up her toys one by one and said their name while moving the toy.
If a dog with an IQ of (IDK, maybe 10?) can learn English…
And if a Baboon can learn to recognize words…
I bet a Baboon could learn to actually attach meaning to those words (but this is just a hunch)…
and if these things can happen (and I strongly believe they can), it says quite a lot (some of which may be controversial) but the one thing apropos to EL is that there’s NO REASON WHY A CHILD CANNOT LEARN TO READ… and by child, I mean someone younger than 1 year old…
Come on, surely a one year old human has the IQ of a Baboon…
lol
“The baboons aren’t reading; they don’t attach any meaning to the words other than recognizing shapes,”
I bet if they used LR to teach them the pictures and videos, some of them could take it a step further. I would LOVE to get my hands on these baboons! lol I didn’t HEAR any pronunciation on the footage? Animals are trained to respond to auditory commands all the time. I would use that food based reward system to:
- -drill letter SOUNDS, not names, and then digraphs and blends
- -keep introducing more and more sight words, along with pictures and video for meaning
- -introduce the pictures and spoken names of a variety of FOODS and ACTIONS but not the written words, including actual shots of baboons waving, jumping, etc
- -I would also command train them for specific actions and selecting specific foods
[li]-Finally, at the end of a year of solid training, I would introduce the WORDS of those specific foods and actions without SPEAKING them. And then if they were able to perform the trained action or select the correct food item without having ever having SEEN the word before, well, then you would know. 
Here’s another one for you…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_LhwuN1c1U
Thanks for that. Now I have no question.
I think the most interesting part of the Baboon thing is that (at least the one they showed) it was able to somehow figure out the rules of language to a small degree. Understanding that “deer” can be a word, but that “izzrtt” cannot is an accomplishment in its own right. We talk a lot around here about intuiting phonics, and obviously this DOES happen with humans (some better at it than others) - and I would argue that in some degree, the baboon is illustrating that it can understand the relationship between consonants and vowels.
That’s pretty huge for a species that lacks the ability to articulate language…
but then the dog thing just shows me that a part of language comprehension (and articulation if you include sign language with gorillas) is available to less developed mammalian brains. We know babies can learn sign language. We know dogs can learn word association, and this dog even learned written word association, and baboons can decipher consonant and vowel relationship… I see no reason at all why a child a year or younger (and certainly within the first two years) cannot learn this same stuff… I think the experts aren’t so adept, LOL. But hey, we already knew that, didn’t we?
I wonder what would happen if you took the baboon and showed him YBCR??? Ha ha ha… yeah, or LR.
“All aboard the reading mobile!!! There’s plenty of room”
A juvenile Sumatran orangutan Aazk (named after the American Association of Zookeepers) who lived at the Roeding Park Zoo (Fresno, California) was taught by Gary L. Shapiro from 1973 to 1975 how to "read & write" with plastic children's letters, following the training techniques of David Premack. The technique of conditional discrimination was used such that the orangutan could eventually distinguish plastic letter (symbols) as representations of referents (e.g., object, actions) and "read" an increasingly longer series of symbols to obtain a referent (e.g., fruit) or "write" an increasingly longer series of symbols to request or describe a referent. While no claim of linguistic competence was made, Aazk's performance demonstrated design features of language, many similar to those demonstrated by Premack's chimpanzee, Sarah.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language