Editing Great ape language (section)

===Washoe and Roger Fouts===
{{main|Roger Fouts}}

The Gardners were scientists schooled in [[behaviorism]]. Roger Fouts came to the chimp language studies as an animal lover pursuing a career in [[Child development]]. These differing backgrounds corresponded with differing approaches. The Gardners initially wanted Fouts and other grad students to strictly use methods of [[operant conditioning]] — rewards and punishment – to teach Washoe, but Fouts believed that teaching a language was not the same as teaching a lab rat tricks. He recalled: <blockquote>According to behaviorism, the combination of a hungry chimp and ready-to-dispense food should be the perfect opportunity for reinforcement and learning. But the hungrier Washoe was, the quicker her signing deteriorated into pure repetition and finally outright begging.<ref name=":5">Fouts, R. (1997), p 83.</ref></blockquote>Fouts believed that chimpanzees needed room to learn in manner similar to human children, on their own timeline. He considered direct instruction ineffective, as it was often met with resistance. The child, not the parent, drives the learning process, argued Fouts:<blockquote>If you try to impose a rigid discipline while teaching a child or a chimp, you are working against the boundless curiosity and need for relaxed play that make learning possible.<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Though the Gardners instituted [[B. F. Skinner|Skinnerian]] protocols in Washoe's first year, they began to see advantages to Fouts' approach, acknowledging, "Young chimpanzees and young children have a limited tolerance for school."<ref name=":5" /> But the issue exposed a key tension behind Project Washoe and similar language research to follow. On one hand, researchers needed a strict, repetitive process with clinical double-blind testing for their work to be accepted as science. Without such rigor, the body of work became vulnerable to criticism. On the other hand, researchers need to recognize the apes' emotional needs or they faced a different suite of problems. The Gardners fit more comfortably in the first camp, focused on scientific rigor; Roger Fouts and his wife Deborah fit more in the latter, later becoming advocates for [[animal rights]] and welfare. But the tension proved unavoidable.