Roger Fouts

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Roger Fouts, 2007

Roger Sheridan Fouts (born June 8, 1943 in Sacramento , California ) is a psychologist and anthropologist who has been researching the communication skills of chimpanzees since the 1960s . His team taught several chimpanzees terms of the sign language of the Deaf ( American Sign Language , ASL) and won so knowledge about the cognitive abilities of our closest relatives.

Life

Roger Fouts studied psychology at California State College in Long Beach , where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1965. Initially, Fouts had the goal of becoming a child psychologist . However, at the suggestion of Beatrix and Allen Gardner, he began a study in the field of behavioral science and received a doctorate in experimental psychology from the University of Nevada at Reno in 1971 .

Already in his undergraduate studies he had dealt specifically with the behavior of great apes. From 1967 to 1970 Roger Fouts was a research assistant at the "Washoe Project" at the University of Nevada, which means that he spent almost all of his time with the young chimpanzee Washoe , to whom he taught American Sign Language for his doctoral thesis. He also taught the chimpanzee Lucy . From 1970 he taught psychology at the University of Oklahoma, since 1980 he has been professor of psychology at Central Washington University. Since 1981 Fouts has also been president of the organization "Friends of Washoe".

Roger Fouts is married to Deborah H. Fouts and has three children with her.

Research topics

Roger Fouts is still particularly concerned with apes and human communication, comparative psychology and psycholinguistics. He is also committed to improving the keeping conditions of chimpanzees, banning medical experiments on great apes and protecting the chimpanzee populations living in the wild. His pioneering work with Washoe - who lived near him - and with other chimpanzees has provided deep insights into the thoughts and feelings of our closest relatives and has profound implications for theories of the origin of our own language.

Roger Fouts has advocated the welfare of chimpanzees in numerous specialist articles, popular science publications, and radio and television appearances. He became known in Germany not least because of the success of his book “Our next relatives”, in which he a. a. describes in detail the amazing language skills of the great apes communicating with ASL.

Based on his research work, it is now considered certain that chimpanzees can learn several hundred sign language terms, use them sensibly and spontaneously and creatively combine them into chains of terms. The ability to understand and use if-then relationships (“If you bring me the bottle, you will get a banana”) was also demonstrated.

Fonts (selection)

  • Roger Fouts: Acquisition and Testing of Gestural Signs in Four Young Chimpanzees. In: Science . Volume 180, No. 4089, 1973, pp. 978-980, doi: 10.1126 / science.180.4089.978 .
  • Roger Fouts, Deborah H. Fouts and Donna Schoenfeld: Sign Language Conversational Interaction Between Chimpanzees. In: Sign Language Studies. Volume 42, 1984, pp. 1–12, abstract (PDF)
  • Roger Fouts and Deborah H. Fouts: Loulis in conversation with the cross-fostered chimpanzees. In: R. Allen Gardner, Beatrice T. Gardner and Thomas E. Van Cantfort (eds.): Teaching sign language to chimpanzees. State University of New York Press, Albany 1989, pp. 293-307, ISBN 978-0-88706-965-9 .
  • Shannon Nicole Cianelli and Roger Fouts: Chimpanzee to chimpanzee American Sign Language. In: Human Evolution. Volume 13, 1998, pp. 147-159, doi: 10.1007 / BF02436502 .
  • Roger Fouts, Stephen Tukel Mills: Our closest relatives. Learn from chimpanzees what it means to be human. Limes Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-8090-3013-9 (published in paperback by Droemer Knaur in 2002, ISBN 3-426-77420-8 ).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Fouts, Roger
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fouts, Roger Sheridan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychologist, anthropologist, and behaviorist
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Sacramento , California , USA