Francine Patterson

Penny Patterson
Born
Francine Patterson

(1947-02-13) February 13, 1947 (age 77)
Chicago, Illinois
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (B.A., 1970)
Stanford University (Ph.D., 1979)
ParentC. H. Patterson
Scientific career
InstitutionsPresident and Research Director of The Gorilla Foundation

Francine "Penny" Patterson (born February 13, 1947) is an American animal psychologist. From 1972 onwards, she taught a modified form of American Sign Language, which she called "Gorilla Sign Language" (GSL), to a gorilla named Koko. The scientific validity of Patterson's claims about the extent of Koko's language mastery has been widely rejected in linguistic and other specialist circles.[1][2][3][4]

  1. ^ "Lingua Franca: Koko Is Dead, but the Myth of Her Linguistic Skills Li…". archive.ph. December 11, 2023.
  2. ^ Ward, Ben (1999). "Koko: Fact or Fiction?". American Language Review. 3 (3): 12–15. ISSN 1092-6992.
  3. ^ Hu, Jane C. (August 20, 2014). "What Do Talking Apes Really Tell Us?". Health & Science (Science). Slate. eISSN 1091-2339. ISSN 1090-6584. Archived from the original on July 15, 2018. Retrieved July 14, 2018.
  4. ^ Terrace, Herbert S. (1982). "Why Koko Can't Talk: The Ape's Still Fooling Most of the People, Most of the Time". The Sciences. 22 (9): 8–10. doi:10.1002/j.2326-1951.1982.tb02120.x.