Word: premack
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Premack's prime evidence is Sarah, a seven-year-old female chimp with a working "vocabulary" of more than 120 words. Sarah can not only comprehend the meaning of these words but can dip into her glossary to answer questions and build original sentences...
Cognitive Ability. To teach Sarah, Psychologist Premack devised symbols cut out of plastic and mounted on metal bases so that Sarah could "write" them on a magnetized board. With practice, Sarah learned that a blue triangle meant an apple, a red square a banana. In time she mastered symbols identifying each of her four trainers, plus other symbols identifying colors and familiar objects such as a pail, a cup and a dish. For example, stands for red, for dish...
...this was mere rote learning. To develop an understanding of syntax. Premack introduced a new symbol representing the preposition on. Given two familiar color symbols representing green and blue, for instance, and by watching the trainer place the green on the blue and vice versa. Sarah eventually came to understand the preposition's purpose. This was one of her first sentences, condensed to a three-symbol command: Green goes on red. Before long, Sarah knew how to obey commands in as many as twelve possible color combinations at an impressive accuracy rate...
...memorable occasion, which Premack records with almost parental pride, his pupil invented a sentence-completion game and invited her trainer to play. The trainer had set up some nonsensical physical-relation tests involving objects and colors-red is on (i.e., superimposed upon) green, green is on banana, apple is on orange-to test Sarah's proficiency in word order. Abruptly, Sarah took over. She began a sentence "Apple is on ... ," and then arranged a number of possible completions, only one of which she considered correct: "Apple is on banana." Then she led her trainer through the multiple choices until...
Over two years, Premack and his assistants trained Sarah in the use of verbs, sentence structure, questions and conceptions, the last being the cognitive ability to grasp not only the root meaning of the word-symbols but their application in totally unfamiliar contexts. Having taught her to associate the color red with apple and the color green with grape, says Premack, "we then tested her comprehension of the conception 'color of.' " He was not surprised when Sarah demonstrated her ability to assign the characteristic "color of" to totally unfamiliar objects: that the redness of an apple, for instance...