Clever Hans Phenomenon: Communication With Horses, Whales, and People (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences) [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Thomas A. Sebeok (Editor), Robert Rosenthal (Editor), Conference on the Clever Hans Phenomenon (Editor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 311 pages
• Publisher: New York Academy of Sciences; illustrated edition edition (December 1970)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0897661141
• ISBN-13: 978-0897661140
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,467,664 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars A SKEPTICAL INTERPETATION OF VARIOUS "ANIMAL COMMUNICATION" EXPERIMENTS, July 12, 2010

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Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Clever Hans Phenomenon: Communication With Horses, Whales, Apes, and People (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences) (Hardcover)

Thomas Albert Sebeok (1920-2001) was an American (born in Hungary) semiotician and linguist. Robert Rosenthal is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside, and author of the famous (infamous?) education book, Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils' Intellectual Development. This 1981 book collects papers given at a conference by a variety of authors (including skeptics like James Randi and Ray Hyman, authors of such books as Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions and The Elusive Quarry: A Scientific Appraisal of Psychical Research).

The editors state in the Introduction, "For yet others, the major lesson is the set of methodological precautions that must be taken to guard against our obtaining data in our research that fits too well with the data we want or expect to obtain---fits too well not because we have been so adroit in divining Nature's ways but because our wishes and our expectations have led us to affect our research subjects to respond in accordance with our expectations, or because we interpret their behavior as consistent with our expectation when in fact it is not."

One presenter states, "I come to the conclusion that the results of animal experiments do not so much depend on the exact sequence and make-up of the experiment itself, but to a great deal also on the past of the individual animal and on the personal attitude of the experimenter."

Another presenter notes concerning the "Washoe Project" and "Nim Chimpsky" experiments, "Washoe is now 15, Koko is 9, and Ally is 9 years old. I know of no evidence that their linguistic skills increased as they became older. An ape's intelligence undoubtedly increases after infancy.... I am therefore skeptical of conjectures that an ape's increasing intelligence would manifest itself in a more sophisticated use of language." Another presenter noted that "The single most striking fact about this corpus is that Nim relied extremely heavily upon a small set of signs. In fact, seven signs-- Nim, me, you, eat, drink, more, and give."