David Premack (October 26, 1925 – June 11, 2015) was an American psychologist who was a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He was educated at the University of Minnesota when

logical positivism Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement in Western philosophy whose central thesis was the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion o ...

was in full bloom. The departments of Psychology and Philosophy were closely allied. Herbert Feigl, Wilfred Sellars, and Paul Meehl led the philosophy seminars, while Group Dynamics was led by

Leon Festinger Leon Festinger (8 May 1919 – 11 February 1989) was an American social psychologist who originated the theory of cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory. The rejection of the previously dominant behaviorist view of social psychol ...

and

Stanley Schachter Stanley Schachter (April 15, 1922 – June 7, 1997) was an American social psychologist, who is perhaps best known for his development of the two factor theory of emotion in 1962 along with Jerome E. Singer. In his theory he states that emotions ...

Research

Premack started in primate research in 1954 at the Yerkes Primate Biology Laboratory at Orange Park outside Jacksonville, Florida. His first two chimpanzee subjects, Sarah and Gussie, started at the University of Missouri and traveled with him to the University of California, Santa Barbara, and then to the University of Pennsylvania, where he had nine chimpanzee subjects. Premack's first publication (1959) was a new theory of reinforcement (which became known as Premack's principle). It argued that the more probable response in any pair of responses could reinforce the less probable response—demonstrating that reinforcement is a relative, not an absolute property.Premack, D. (1959). Toward empirical behavior laws: I. Positive reinforcement. ''Psych Rev.'', ''66'', 219-233. This theory predicts six conditions, all of which have been supported by evidence: #Reinforcement is a relative property. Responses A, B, C have a descending rank order of probability. A will therefore reinforce both B and C. C will reinforce neither. This suggests that reinforcement is an absolute property. However, B corrects this view. B will reinforce C, but not A. B is both a

reinforcer In behavioral psychology, reinforcement is a consequence applied that will strengthen an organism's future behavior whenever that behavior is preceded by a specific antecedent stimulus. This strengthening effect may be measured as a higher freq ...

and not a reinforcer. Reinforcement is therefore a relative property.Premack, D. (1963). Rate differential reinforcement in monkey manipulation. ''J. Exp Anal Behav'',''6'',81-90. #Reinforcement is a reversible property. When drinking is more probable than running, drinking reinforces running. When the probabilities are reversed, running reinforces drinking.Premack, D. (1962). Reversibility of the reinforcement relation. ''Science'', ''136'', 255-257. #Historically, consummatory responses, eating and drinking, have served exclusively as reinforcers, but consummatory responses are, like any other response, subject to reinforcement. #Reinforcement and

punishment Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon a group or individual, meted out by an authority—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a response and deterrent to a particular acti ...

, traditionally contrasted as opposites, are in fact equivalent except for sign. If response A leads contingently to B, and B is more probable than A, A will increase in frequency (reinforcement); conversely, if A leads contingently to B, and B is less probable than A, A will decrease in frequency (punishment). The major contrast is not between reward and punishment; but between reward and punishment as contrasted with freedom. Freedom is the condition in which stimuli are freely (not contingently) available to an individual.Premack, D. (1971). Two sides of a generalization, or catching up with commonsense: Reinforcement and punishment in R. Glaser (ed.) The nature of reinforcement. ''N.Y. Academic Press''Terhune, J., & Premack, D. (1970). On the proportionality between the probability of not-running and the punishment effect of being forced to run. ''Learning and Motivation'', ''1'', 141-149. #When motorized running is more probable than lever pressing but less probable than drinking, then running reinforces lever pressing and punishes drinking. In other words, the same response can be both a reinforcer and a punisher - at the same time and for the same individual.Terhune, J., & Premack, D. (1974). Comparison of reinforcement and punishment functions produced by same contingent event in the same subjects. ''Learning and Motivation'', ''5'', 221-250. #The equivalence of reinforcement and punishment is further suggested in this interesting fact:

rat Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents. Species of rats are found throughout the order Rodentia, but stereotypical rats are found in the genus ''Rattus''. Other rat genera include ''Neotoma'' ( pack rats), ''Bandicota'' (bandicoot ...

s are either sensitive to both reinforcement and punishment, or insensitive to both; they are never sensitive to one but insensitive to the other. Premack introduced the concept of Theory of Mind, with Guy Woodruff, in an article published in 1978.Premack, D. & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? ''Behav. Brain Sc.'', ''4'', 515-526. This has proven to be a fruitful concept in psychology and neuroscience. For example, hundreds of articles have been published on theory of mind in fields ranging from comparative psychology studies of cognitive capacities of animalsCall, J. & Tomasello, M. (2008). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later. ''Trends Cogn Sci.'', ''12''(5), 189-192.Emery, N.J. & Clayton, N.S. (2009). Comparative social cognition. ''Annu Rev Psychol.'',''60'', 87-113. to human developmental psychology studies of infant cognitionWellman, H.M. & Cross, D. (2001). Theory of mind and conceptual change. ''Child Dev.'', ''72''(3), 70270-7. to social neuroscience studies of the brain substrates that mediate simulations of mental processes in other individuals.Yoshida, W., Dolan, R.J., & Friston, K.J. (2008). Game theory of mind. ''PLoS Comput Biol'', ''4''(12), e1000254. Premack's analysis of same/different led him and his associates to show that chimpanzees can do analogies. Sameness/difference is not a relation between objects (e.g., A same A, A different B) or properties, it is a relation between relations: For example: consider the relation between AA and BB, CD and EF on the one hand; and AA and CD on the other. AA and BB are both instances of same; the relation between them is "same." CD and EF are both instances different; the relation between them therefore is "same." AA is an instance of same, and CD an instance of different; the relation between them is "different." This analysis set the stage for teaching chimpanzees the word "same" for AA, and "different" for CD. When taught these words, chimpanzees spontaneously formed simple analogies between: physically similar relations (e.g., small circle is to large circle as small triangle is to large triangle), and functionally similar relations (e.g., key is to lock as can opener is to can).Gillan, D. J., Premack, D., & Woodruff, G. (1981). Reasoning in the chimpanzee: 1. Analogical reasoning. ''J Exp Psych: Animal Behavior Processes'', ''7'', 1-17. A nonverbal method for testing causal inference designed by Premack made it possible to show that both young children and chimpanzees are capable of causal inference.Premack, D. (1976). ''Intelligence in ape and man''. Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, N.J. Premack demonstrated that chimpanzees can reassemble a disassembled face, placing the eyes, nose, mouth in the appropriate place. In addition he showed that chimpanzees are capable of

symbolic behavior Symbolic behavior is "a person’s capacity to respond to or use a system of significant symbols" (Faules & Alexander, 1978, p. 5). The symbolic behavior perspective argues that the reality of an organization is socially constructed through c ...

. After viewing themselves in a mirror wearing, on different occasions, a hat, glasses, necklace, and given the picture of a face, 48 hours later, the chimpanzees applied clay to the top of the head (hat), to the eyes (glasses), and the throat (necklace) respectively.Premack, D. (1975). Putting a face together. ''Science'', ''188'', 228-236. Premack further argued that young children divide the world into two kinds of objects, those that move only when acted upon by other objects, and those that are self-propelled and move on their own. He argued that infants attribute intentionality to self-propelled objects that show goal-directed action. Further that infants attribute value to the interaction of intentional objects, e.g. positive value to gentle actions such as one object caressing another, negative value to harsh actions such as one object hitting another. In addition infants assign positive value when one object helps another to achieve its goal, negative value when one object hinders another from achieving its goal. Finally, he and Ann Premack argued: infants equate caressing with helping (despite their physical dissimilarity); and equate hitting with hindering (despite their physical dissimilarity.Premack, D. (1990). The infant's theory of self-propelled objects. ''Cognition'', ''36'', 1-16.Premack, D., & Premack, A. (1994). Infants attribute value +/- to the goal-directed actions of self-propelled objects. ''J Cog. Neuroscience'', ''9'', 848-856. Premack has focused on cognitive differences between the intelligence of animals and humans. Human competence is domain general, capable of serving indeterminately many goals; animal competence is a narrow adaptation, serving only one goal. For instance, humans teach all possible activities (different ones in different cultures), whereas

meerkat MeerKAT, originally the Karoo Array Telescope, is a radio telescope consisting of 64 antennas in the Meerkat National Park, in the Northern Cape of South Africa. In 2003, South Africa submitted an expression of interest to host the Square Kilom ...

s and

cat The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...

s, two of very few animals that teach at all, teach one activity: how to eat dangerous food such as scorpions in the one case, and how to stalk mice in the other.Premack, D. (2007). Human and animal cognition: Continuity and discontinuity. ''Proc Nat Aca Science'', ''104'', 13861-13867. What explains the domain-generality of human competence? Human competence is composed of an interweaving of multiple evolutionarily-independent components; animal competence of a single evolutionary component.Premack, D. (in press). Why humans are unique: Three theories. Perspectives on Psychological Science. Premack debated of the nature of linguistic performance in apes with Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky at the Centre Royaumont pour une Science de l'Homme, during one of the last moments when Jacques Monod could participate in intellectual debates shortly before his death. He died at the age of 89, and was buried at Riverside National Cemetery on June 17, 2015.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Premack, David 1925 births 2015 deaths 20th-century American psychologists American cognitive scientists Animal cognition writers Fellows of the Society of Experimental Psychologists University of California, Santa Barbara faculty University of Missouri faculty University of Pennsylvania faculty University of Minnesota alumni Experimental psychologists