Biography
Laura-Ann Petitto is a cognitive neuroscientist who appeared as herself in the 2011 documentary film Project Nim, directed by James Marsh. The film examines the life of the chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky and the 1970s language acquisition experiment at Columbia University, in which Petitto served as primary sign language teacher, project coordinator and surrogate mother.
She began her involvement with the project as an undergraduate at Ramapo College of New Jersey. Petitto later earned a master's degree from New York University and a master's degree and Ed.D. from Harvard University. Her early research contributed to findings that chimpanzees, while intelligent, do not possess the linguistic capacities of humans.
Petitto has held academic positions at McGill University, Dartmouth College, the University of Toronto and Gallaudet University. She has conducted research on the biological bases of language acquisition, signed languages, bilingualism and the bilingual brain, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998.
