Background
Premack, David was born on October 26, 1925 in Aberdeen, South Dakota, United States. Son of Leonard B. and Sonja (Liese) Premack.
( Reveals the innate characteristics of human intelligenc...)
Reveals the innate characteristics of human intelligence Humans are the inheritors of millenia of animal evolutionindeed, a mere 1.6 percent genetic difference separates us from our closest relative, the chimpand yet clearly human intelligence is a thing apart. Leading experimental psychologist David Premack and his long-time collaborator, Ann Premack, have made an extraordinary joint career of teasing out exactly what are the deep characteristics of the human mind that separates us from our closest animal relatives. In Original Intelligence, the Premacks draw upon years of brilliant experimental work of their own and others with animals and children, and human babies as young as four months. Carefully comparing and contrasting the abilities of animals and humans, they present compelling evidence for the existence of "modules," or inborn intuitions that enable even extremely young humans to recognize basic physical laws such as gravity, do arithmetic, draw analogies, understand music, and, of course use language. Finally, they explore the psychological, social, and ethical implications of these findings, and offer prescriptions for how educational methods should be reformed in light of this new understanding of how the mind works.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419660128/?tag=2022091-20
( What is language and what is the nature of the intellig...)
What is language and what is the nature of the intelligence that can acquire it? This volume, originally published in 1976, describes 10 years of research devoted to these questions. The author describes his programmatic research of decomposing language into atomic constituents, designing and applying training programs for teaching these to chimpanzees, and for teaching chimps major human ontological categories, as well as for interrogative, declarative, and imperative sentence forms. The volume details the progress from teaching apes simple predicates such as same–different, to more complex predicates such as if–then, and the success of the program led to the following questions directly related to intelligence: What made the training program effective? What is the cognitive equipment of the species which enables it to learn language? What does this tell us about human intelligence? The answers were suggested in terms of conceptual structure, representational capacity, memory and the ability to handle second-order relations. The results of this experimentation, which resulted in synonymy in some animals, shed light not only on the nature of language, but the nature of intelligence as well. One of the earliest ape language and intelligence studies, today this classic can be read and enjoyed again in its historical context.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/184872263X/?tag=2022091-20
Premack, David was born on October 26, 1925 in Aberdeen, South Dakota, United States. Son of Leonard B. and Sonja (Liese) Premack.
Bachelor magna cum laude, University Minnesota, 1949. Doctor of Philosophy, University Minnesota, 1955.
Research associate, Yerkes laboratories Primate Biology, Orange Park, Florida, 1955;
research associate, assistant professor psychology, U. Missouri, Columbia, 1956-1958;
associate professor, U. Missouri, 1959-1962;
professor, U. Missouri, 1963-1964;
professor, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1965-1975;
visiting professor, Harvard University, 1970-1971;
professor, University of Pennsylvania, since 1975. Artist-in-residence Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1955. Fellow Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, 1980, Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, 1985-1986;visiting scientist Japan Society for Promotion of Science, 1980.
University research lecturer University of California, Santa Barbara, 1973. Member science governor board Fyssen Foundation, Paris, since 1989. Associate neuroscience research program, Louisiana Jolla, California, since 1991.
( What is language and what is the nature of the intellig...)
( What is language and what is the nature of the intellig...)
( Reveals the innate characteristics of human intelligenc...)
(Out of Print)
Served with United States Army, 1943-1946. Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science. Member American Psychological Society (William James fellow 2005), Society Experimental Psychologists.
Married Ann M. James, October 26, 1951. Children: Ben, Lisa, Timothy.
