Charisse Nixon, Ph.D Developmental Psychologist at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College and Director of Research and Evaluation for The Ophelia Project discusses the phenomenon of learned helplessness. (Shot by Mark Steensland)
Experiment: Conformity to gender roles. We placed common male and female signs on opposite transparent doors instructing people to walk through the correct entrance.
http://www.ted.com Savage-Rumbaugh's work with bonobo apes, which can understand spoken language and learn tasks by watching, forces the audience to rethink how much of what a species can do is determined by biology -- and how much by cultural exposure.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes -- including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10
This is an excerpt from the introduction to the Meet Koko introduction video. It introduces Project Koko, and features Dr. Penny Patterson, its principle investigator, describing an important insight she gained very shortly after beginning to work with Koko on the first ever interspecies communication study involving gorillas.
Lesson: The success of project Koko is in large part due to the development of a close, loving and respectful bond with a member of another species, because of that species' extraordinary similarity with our own.
Date Added: Jan 25, 2008
Videographer: Ron Cohn
Michael grew up with Koko; they learned sign language together, they both painted beautifully, and they became like brother and sister. But Michael didn't come to live with Koko until he was 3 1/2 years old. As an infant in Africa, he lost his parents at the hands of poachers, in the illegal bushmeat trade, and witnessed his own mother's demise. In this clip, Michael responds to a question about his mother with this description of that event — a memory that he conveyed several times, before his own passing in 2000. Michael will be remembered by Koko and everyone at the Gorilla Foundation always — he was a true inspiration.
Lesson: Gorillas can not only use language to communicate their current wants and needs, they can also use it to relate memories. From Michael we learn directly about the tragedy of the bushmeat crisis, which he experienced firsthand as a baby.
Date Added: Mar 23, 2008
Videographer: Ron Cohn
Although Koko was more subdued on her 32nd birthday than on her 31st, she enjoyed her feast foods (especially the new ones) and opening her many gifts and cards, which she spent more time examining than last year.
She started the day with her ritual birthday walk, which began at 7:45 AM, and took her from Ndumes building to Pennys car, to outdoor gardening activities, to snooping in on the communication research office.
She reluctantly came in at 10:10 AM. Penny thinks she really wanted to spend the entire day on the walk.
Once inside, Kokos birthday feast began (including birthday cake with live candles—and yes, she blew them out in one breath), followed by a longer-than-usual session of opening and examining her presents and cards.
At the end of the day, Koko retired in a nest of her gifts and played with her new bracelet, until it was time to turn out the lights continue the celebration in her dreams.
Date Added: Jul 4, 2004
Videographer: Ron
