Science. In 1991, Rescorla was awarded the Howard Crosby Warren Medal by the Society of Experimental Psychologists. He also received the Ira Abrams Distinguished Teaching Award of the School of Arts and Sciences at Penn in 1999, followed by appointment as the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology in 2000. In 2005, Rescorla received the Horsley Grantt Award of the Pavlovian Society. Following that, in 2006, he was granted an honorary doctoral degree by the Ghent University, in Belgium. He was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008. 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. The model has been extremely influential, leading to many new experimental findings and theoretical developments. 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. Representative 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 and 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 External link Robert Rescorla at the University of Pennsylvania American cognitive scientists Fellows of the Society of Experimental Psychologists