The major contrast is not between reward and punishment but between reward and punishment as contrasted with freedom. 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). Reinforcement and punishment, traditionally contrasted as opposites, are in fact equivalent except for sign.Historically, consummatory responses, eating and drinking, have served exclusively as reinforcers, but consummatory responses are, like any other response, subject to reinforcement.When the probabilities are reversed, running reinforces drinking. When drinking is more probable than running, drinking reinforces running. Reinforcement is a reversible property.Reinforcement is therefore a relative property. B is both a reinforcer and not a reinforcer. This suggests that reinforcement is an absolute property. Responses A, B, C have a descending rank order of probability. This theory predicts six conditions, all of which have been supported by evidence: 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's first publication (1959) was a new theory of reinforcement (which became known as Premack's principle). 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 started in primate research in 1954 at the Yerkes Primate Biology Laboratory at Orange Park outside Jacksonville, Florida. Herbert Feigl, Wilfred Sellars, and Paul Meehl led the philosophy seminars, while Group Dynamics was led by Leon Festinger and Stanley Schachter. The departments of Psychology and Philosophy were closely allied. He was educated at the University of Minnesota when logical positivism was in full bloom. David Premack (Octo– June 11, 2015) was an American psychologist who was a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
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