It was not until Nim was introduced to Laura Pettito that he began his journey with learning sign language. To no surprise, Nim was almost unresponsive to sign language unless there was something in it for him if he did the sign. With many observers and trainers guiding Nim in his learning of sign language, the observations gave clear insight on what the outcome truly was. The trainers noted that Nim had made over 20,000 sequences, only for Terrace to disprove that by noticing that Nim was merely repeating signs done by his trainers. This observation had Terrace believing that, in total, Nim knew about 125 signs.