An Alternative Explanation for Premack & Premack

SCIENTIFIC mER - - OFFPRINTS Teaching Language to an Ape by Ann James Premack and David Premack SCIENTIFIC s / ilYIERI

Increased eating in rats deprived of running.

Daily food intake in rats was temporarily reduced by the introduction of an activity wheel and temporarily increased by the subsequent removal of the wheel. When this outcome is coupled with the positive relation between food deprivation and running-and food deprivation is seen as a loss of eating rather than as a physiological state-there is the suggestion that the total behavior output of the...

Psychology. Is language the key to human intelligence?

Reversibility of the reinforcement relation.

Parameters were identified for the rat which both made drinking more probable than running and running more probable than drinking. In the same subjects, depending upon which parameters were used, running reinforced drinking and drinking reinforced running. This relationship suggests that a "reward" is simply any response that is independently more probable than another response.

Motor competence as integral to attribution of goal.

In a recent article, Gergely et al. (1995) presented some interesting data encumbered, however, by an interpretation we think the data do not support. There is, nevertheless, an interpretation they do support—one which, in our view, gives the data their interest. In order to contrast the authors’ interpretation with ours, we begin by presenting a simplified account of their experiment. The acco...