... wished to explore, was whether they can use something similar to human language to do this. The failure of the early studies to encourage chimpanzees to use speech sounds led the Gardners to look for a different mode of controlled communication. The expressive qualities of a chimpanzee's natural gestures meant that the language chosen was American Sign Language (ASL). This thoughtful choice of ASL meant that the studies reliability and validity was increased in a number of ways. It answered to critics of previous studies of a chimp just imitating sign language, which was symbolic for their meaning, as ASL contained many arbitrary signs. It was also reasoned by the Gardners that as ASL was commonly in use, they could create a comparison the progress of Washoe with the progress of a deaf child born to deaf parents. This also meant that a comparison could be made, which would mean ...

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