Washow the chimpanzee between 1966 and 1970. To enable comparisons with human children, the Gardners raised and taught Washoe within the context of family life rather than that of the operant conditioning laboratory. They attempted to replicate, as far as possible, the context and process of a human child acquiring his or her natural language. More specifically, their goal was to raise and teach Washoe in essentially the same way as deaf foster parents would raise a deaf child, which in turn would enable comparisons to deaf children. So, for these reasons the Gardners felt it important that the only language they used