MIKKA: GREETINGS AND ALL

PORTIA (INTRODUCTION OF GUA AND DONALD):

Animal psychologists Winthrop Niles Kellogg and his wife Luella carried out a bizarre
experiment in the 1930s as they raised a chimp named Gua and their son Donald as
"brother and sister".

On June 26, 1931, the Kelloggs welcomed their new arrival, a baby chimpanzee called
Gua, who they would raise alongside Donald. It was a bid to see whether environment
would influence a chimp's development - and how how human they could make it. : On
June 26, 1931, comparative psychologist Winthrop Niles Kellogg and his wife welcomed
a new arrival home: not a human infant, but a baby chimpanzee. The couple planned to
raise the chimp, Gua, alongside their own baby boy, Donald. As later described in The
Psychological Record, the idea was to see how environment influenced development.
Could a chimp grow up to behave like a human? Or even think it was a human? 

Since his student days, Kellogg had dreamed of conducting such an experiment. He was
fascinated by wild children, or those raised with no human contact, oftentimes in nature.
Abandoning a human child in the wilderness would be ethically reprehensible, Kellogg
knew, so he opted to experiment on the reverse scenario—bringing an infant animal into
civilization.

Gua, seven and a half months old at that time their son, Donald, was ten months old.
Their purpose was to learn what similarities and differences would develop between
Donald and Gua if treated alike in every detail. The chimpanzee was dressed like an
infant, in napkins and later in rompers. She was wheeled in a carriage, sat in a high
chair, slept in a bed and was kissed good night. No special effort was made to teach
Gua spectacular stunts but rather to teach her the same kinds of things a fond parent
would do with a baby girl. The experiment was carried on with a careful day-by-day
record of observations, films and tests for a period of nine months. So now, let us call
on Miss Brosas and Miss Manggay to discuss about the entire experiment.
ANGELA AND ANTONETTE (ENTIRE EXPERIMENT)

Gua was taught the kind of things a fond parent would do to a baby girl.

They were raised in the exact same way: they both wore baby onesies, made to sit in a
high chair, slept in a bed and were kissed good night, though Gua was carted around in
a small wagon. In addition to conducting an exhaustive list of scientific experiments
that included subjects such as "blood pressure, memory, body size, scribbling, reflexes,
depth perception, vocalization, locomotion, reactions to tickling, strength, manual
dexterity, problem solving, fears, equilibrium, play behavior, climbing, obedience,
grasping, language comprehension, attention span, and others," The Psychological
Record authors note.

According to one report, the Kelloggs would tap Donald and Gua's heads with spoons to
hear the difference in the sound of their skulls and made loud noises to see who would
react faster.

For a while, Gua actually excelled at these tests compared to Donald.

They even tried to convince Gua not to eat soap bubbles by jamming a bar of the
product into her mouth.

Eerie footage of the experiment shows Gua and Donald being put in high chairs and
being spun round and round until they start crying.

They were also pushed to complete cruel tests in which they were put through a
labyrinth and forced to get out while the perimeters changed around them.

For a while, Gua excelled in these drills compared to Donald; but after they both turned
one, things began to change.

But eventually, as NPR notes, Gua hit a cognitive wall: no amount of training or nurturing
could overcome the fact that, genetically, she was a chimpanzee. As such, The
Psychological Record authors write, the Kelloggs' experiment "probably succeeded
better than any study before its time in demonstrating the limitations heredity placed on
an organism regardless of environmental opportunities as well as the developmental
gains that could be made in enriched environments."
The experiment, however, ended rather abruptly and mysteriously. Let’s now give the
spotlight to Miss Vergara to explain the possible reasons why it ended.

JOELLE (POST-EXPERIMENT)

As The Psychological Record authors describe: 

Our final concern is why the project ended when it did.

We are told only that the study was terminated on March 28, 1932, when Gua was
returned to the Orange Park primate colony through a gradual rehabilitating process.
But as for why, the Kelloggs, who are so specific on so many other points, leave the
reader wondering. 
It could be that Gua's physical advantages were slowly eclipsed by Donald's ability to
formulate words and the doctors soon realised they had hit the chimp's limit of
intelligence.

It could be that Kelloggs were simply exhausted from nine months of non-stop
parenting and scientific work. Or perhaps it was the fact that Gua was becoming
stronger and less manageable, and that Mrs. and Dr. Kellogg feared that she might
harm her human brother. Finally, one other possibility comes to mind, the authors point
out: while Gua showed no signs of learning human languages, her brother Donald had
began imitating Gua's chimp noises. "In short, the language retardation in Donald may
have brought an end to the study," the authors write.

To give us the conclusion, let’s call on Miss Venzon.

PRINCESS (CONCLUSION)

In this experiment, , the couple got more than they bargained for when it was actually
their son Donald who ended up becoming more ape than man. The experiment had to
be cancelled as reportedly the tot started to make noises like a chimp and began to
become more aggressive, even biting people.

It was found that the chimpanzee was able to take on many human ways. She wore
shoes and walked upright. She was able to eat with a spoon, drink out of a glass and
open doors before the boy acquired those abilities. She imitated human gestures and
ways of showing affection like hugging and kissing Donald as well as the parents. Like
most children she made a fuss when the ‘parents’ went out and left them alone.

Gua’s rate of development was much faster than the boy’s, especially in the motor skills
of climbing and jumping. She also learned to respond to a total of ninety-five words and
phrases such as ‘kiss Donald’, ‘shake hands’, ‘show me your nose’. She never could
learn to utter words or phrases other than to make known her wishes through grunts
and squeals. Her toilet training was appreciably slower than the control achieved by the
boy.

Although the chimp progressed faster than the boy in the earliest stages, it became
evident toward the end of the experiment that she was falling behind, especially ‘in the
matter of intellectual adaptation to human demands’. The early superiority is attributed
to the fact that anthropoids in general mature earlier than humans. A monkey reaches
puberty at about four years, whereas humans reach puberty between twelve and
fourteen on average, with girls generally reaching puberty before boys.

In the report of this experiment by Dr. Kellogg and his wife it was indicated that a good
deal of human socializing can be achieved by an animal through training and human
association. But it also was noted that ‘there are definite limits to the degree of
humanization that can be achieved by non-human species regardless of the amount of
socializing and humanizing effects.’
Donald also began to move on all fours like the chimp - and the two would even wrestle
like two wild animals.Seeing what was happening to their son, the Kelloggs terminated
the experiment - and Gua was sent away, dying of pneumonia just a year later aged 3.
And while not much more is known about Donald, he later killed himself aged just 43 in
1973. The test was due to last five years - but it was abandoned after just nine months.

Lastly, let us call on Miss Malolos to give the relation of this study to anthropological
linguistics.

RELATION OF THIS STUDE TO ANTHROLPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS

As we researched about the Gua’s experiment, we indeed saw its relation to

anthropological linguistics. Why? Because anthropological linguistics covers the
relations between language and culture and the relations between human biology,
cognition and language. In this experiment, Kellogs tried to investigate the relationship
between language and culture or environment wherein he tried to conditioned the baby
chimp to their son, Donald, to see if there will be changes or development in terms of
language acquisition of the chimp when associated with the same behaviors or
treatments of the human baby. When we say culture, it deals with the way of life
including the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols. They dress, eat, punish, and
experimented identically. Their developments in other aspects are almost the same
except in terms of language acquisition. There’s a big difference between their
developments. Just like what Avram Chomsky, it is innate for us, humans, to be able to
speak that makes Donald different from Gua. To sum it all up, this experiment is
connected to anthropological linguistics since this experiment tried to investigate on
how culture or environment can affect the language acquisition development. This
experiment gave us a grasp on what will happen if we treat humans and animals
identically. It is not surprising at all that only humans have the ability to communicate
using our language. Apes can be taught how to talk like humans, but it’s mainly
imitating and not true knowledge of the language. Even though they raised the baby
chimp and the human baby in the same environment, same treatment it is undeniably
that it doesn’t help animals in language development.