[1] The researchers stated that Lana could discriminate between lexigrams, sequence words grammatically and make novel utterances, demonstrating language learning.
Ernst von Glasersfeld developed the language that Lana learned to use: he coined the term "lexigram", created the first 120 of them and designed the grammar that regulated their combination.
This artificial language was called Yerkish, in honor of Robert M. Yerkes, the founder of the laboratory within which the LANA project was conceived and conducted.
Included in the project were graduate students Gwen Bell Dooley, Beverly Wilkenson, and Michael D. Haberman, among others.
Gwen Bell Dooley demonstrated Lana's cognitive capability to distinguish between two numerical sets of objects which she then labelled with either "more" or "less", whichever was requested.