Wolfgang Prinz

Infobox Scientist


image_width = 150px
name = Wolfgang Prinz
birth_date = 1942
birth_place = Germany
death_date =
death_place =
residence = flagicon|Germany Leipzig, Germany
nationality = flagicon|Germany German
field = Cognitive Psychology
work_institution = Max Plank Institute (professor, director)
alma_mater = University of Munster, Munster; Germany
doctoral_advisor =
doctoral_students =
known_for = The common coding theory
prizes = Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award of the German Research Foundation
religion =
footnotes =

Wolfgang Prinz is director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and an internationally recognized expert in cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind.

Background

Wolfgang Prinz studied Psychology, Philosophy and Zoology at the University of Munster (Germany) from 1962-1966, and in 1970 was awarded a Ph.D. from the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. Prinz became director at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research Munich, Germany, between 1990-2004. Since 2004, he is director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.

Memberships in Research Councils and Societies

Academia Europea; German Academy of Natural Scientist Leopoldina, Halle (Saale), Germany; ScientificAdvisory Board of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), University of Bielefeld, Germany; AdvisoryBoard of the Dean, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany; HonoraryMember of the European Society of Psychology (ESCoP); Psychonomic Society; German Society ofPsychology (DGPs).

Academic achievements

Prinz is the father of the common coding theory. This theory claims parity between perception and action. Its core assumption is that actions are coded in terms of the perceivable effects (i.e., the distal perceptual events) they should generate [Prinz, W. (1997). Perception and action planning. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 9, 129-154.] [Prinz, W. (2003). Experimental approaches to action. In J. Roessler & N. Eilan (Eds.). Agency and Self-awareness (pp. 175-187). Oxford: Oxford University Press.] [Hommel, B., Müsseler, Aschersleben, G. and Prinz, W. (2001). The theory of event coding (TEC): A framework for perception and action planning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 849-937.] Performing a movement leaves behind a bidirectional association between the motor pattern it has generated by and the sensory effects that it produces. Such an association can then be used backwards to retrieve a movement by anticipating its effects. [Hommel, B. (2004). Event files: feature binding in and across perception and action. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 494-500.] These perception/action codes are also accessible during action observation (for an historical account of the ideo-motor principle, see [Stock, A. & Stock, C. (2004). A short history of the ideo-motor action. Psychological Research, 68, 176-188.] Observation of an action should activate action representations to the degree that the perceived and the represented action are similar. [Knoblich, G. & Flach, R. (2001). Predicting the effects of actions: interactions of perception and action. Psychological Science, 12, 467-472.] Such a claim suggests that we represent observed, executed and imagined actions in a commensurate manner and makes specific predictions regarding the nature of action and perceptual representations. First, representations for observed and executed actions should rely on a shared neural substrate. Second, a common cognitive system predicts interference effects when action and perception attempt to access shared representations simultaneously. Third, such a system predicts facilitation of action based on directly prior perception and vice versa.

The common coding theory has received strong support from a variety of empirical studies in developmental psychology [Sommerville, J. A., & Decety, J. (2006). Weaving the fabric of social interaction: Articulating developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience in the domain of motor cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 179-200.] , cognitive neuroscience [Brass, M., Schmitt, R., Spengler, S. & Gergely, G. (2007). Investigating action understanding: inferential processes versus motor simulation. Current Biology 17, 24, 2117-2121.] , cognitive science [Knoblich, G., & Sebanz, N. (2006). The social nature of perception and action. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 99-104.] and neurophysiology [Sebanz, N., Knoblich, G., Prinz, W., & Wascher, E. (2006). Twin Peaks: An ERP study of action planning and control in co-acting individuals. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 859-870.] . This theory is at the core of what has been called Motor cognition.In neuroscience, evidence for the common coding theory ranges from electrophysiological recordings in monkeys in which mirror neurons in the ventral premotor and posterior parietal cortices fire both during goal-directed actions and observation of the same actions performed by another individual [Rizzolatti, G., Fogassi, L., & Gallese, V. (2001). Neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the understanding and the imitation of action. Nature Review Neuroscience, 2, 661-670. ] , to functional neuroimaging experiments in humans which indicate that the neural circuits involved in action execution partly overlap with those activated when actions are observed. [Decety, J., & Grèzes, J. (2006). The power of simulation: Imagining one’s own and other’s behavior. Brain Research, 1079, 4-14.]

elected works

* Meltzoff, A. & Prinz, W. (2002). "The Imitative Mind: Development, Evolution and Brain Bases." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Schütz-Bosbach, S., & Prinz, W. (2007). "Perceptual resonance: Action-induced modulation of perception." Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(8), 349-355.
* Prinz, W. (2006). "Free will as a social institution." In S. Pockett, W. P. Banks, & S. Gallagher (Eds.), Does consciousness cause behavior? (pp. 257-276). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
* Bosbach, S., Cole, J., Prinz, W., & Knoblich, G. (2005). "Inferring another's expectation fr om action: The role of peripheral sensation." Nature Neuroscience, 8(10), 1295-1297.
* Drost, U. C., Rieger, M., Brass, M., Gunter, T. C., & Prinz, W. (2005). "When hearing turns into playing: Movement induction by auditory stimuli in pianists." The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Section A: Human Experimental Psychology, 58A(8), 1376-1389.

References

ee also

* Experimental psychology
* Social cognition
* Motor cognition
* Sense of agency
* Imitation
* Philosophy

External links

* Max-Plank Institute [http://www.mpg.de/]
* Wolfgang Prinz web page [http://www.cbs.mpg.de/staff/prinz-10359]