Robert A. Rescorla

Rescorla was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on May 9, 1940. He attended high school in Westfield, New Jersey. Beginning in 1958, he attended Swarthmore College, where conducted experiments on monkeys with Henry Gleitman and served as Solomon Asch's research assistant doing human learning experiments. He graduated in 1962 with a B.A. in psychology, with minors in philosophy and math. In 1966, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked with Richard Solomon. == Career ==

Rescorla taught at Yale University from 1966 to 1981. While at Yale, Rescorla began a fruitful collaboration with colleague Allan Wagner, which led to the development of the Rescorla–Wagner model. In 1985, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and in 1986 was awarded the Distinguished Scientific Contribution award of the American Psychological Association. In 1989, he was named the University of Pennsylvania's James M. Skinner Professor of Science. He also received the Ira Abrams Distinguished Teaching Award of the School of Arts and Sciences at Penn in 1999, == Research and contributions ==

The Rescorla-Wagner Theory In 1972, Robert A. Rescorla and his colleague Allan R. Wagner at Yale University, published the Rescorla–Wagner model of associative learning. This model conceptualizes learning as the development of associations between conditioned (CS) and unconditioned (US) stimuli, with learning occurring when these stimuli are paired on discrete trials. The change in the association between a CS and an US that occurs when the two are paired depends on how strongly the US is predicted on that trial – that is, informally, how "surprised" the subject is by the US. The amount of this "surprise" depends on the summed associative strength of all cues present during that trial. In contrast, previous models derived the change in associative strength from the current value of the CS alone. Research program Rescorla conducted research at the University of Pennsylvania on animal learning and behavior, focusing on associative learning and particularly Pavlovian conditioning. Rescorla's interest in associative learning processes focused on three questions. First, in what situations did associative learning occur? Second, when associative learning occurred, what elements were involved? Third, what principles accounted for the experimental findings? To research these questions, Rescorla and his team used an assortment of methods, including for example fear conditioning, reward training and autoshaping. == Personal life and death ==

Rescorla was first married to Marged Lindner. In the 1970s, he married Leslie V. Altman, but they later divorced. They had two sons together. He remarried to Shirley Steele. Rescorla died March 24, 2020, after complications from a fall. == Publications ==

• Rescorla, R. A. (2006) Deepened Extinction from Compound Stimulus Presentation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 32, 135-144. • Rescorla, R. A. (2008). Evaluating conditioning of related and unrelated stimuli using a compound test. Learning & Behavior, 36, 67-74. • Rescorla, R. A. (2008). Conditioning of stimuli with nonzero initial value. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 34, 315-323. == References ==