Robert Rescorla
Robert Rescorla was a researcher in learning and author of the 1968 Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology paper on the probability of an event in the presence and absence of a signal in fear conditioning.
Who they are
The work of Robert Rescorla reaches this site through the paper listed below. On this site the name is tied to Contingency in Conditioning, Classical Conditioning.
Key papers
Rescorla, R. A. (1968). Probability of shock in the presence and absence of CS in fear conditioning. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 66(1), 1-5. What it reports: Compared an account of conditioning based on the number of signal and event pairings with one based on contingency. Brief shocks equally likely with and without a tone produced no conditioning to the tone, while the same shocks given only during the tone produced substantial conditioning; conditioning rose with the chance of the event during the signal and fell with its chance without the signal.
Key ideas
Contingency in Conditioning: The relation between how likely an event is when a signal is present and how likely it is when the signal is absent.
Classical Conditioning: Learning in which a neutral signal comes to trigger a response because it has repeatedly arrived just before something that already triggered it.
Sources
- Rescorla, R. A. (1968). Probability of shock in the presence and absence of CS in fear conditioning. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 66(1), 1-5.