Abstract
The theory of Pavlovian conditioning presented by Robert Rescorla and Allan Wagner in 1972 (the Rescorla-Wagner model) has been enormously important in animal learning research. It also has been applied in a variety of areas other than animal learning. We summarize the contribution of the Rescorla-Wagner model to research in verbal learning, social psychology, human category learning, human judgments of correlational relationships, transitive inference, color aftereffects, and physiological regulation. We conclude that there have been few models in experimental psychology as influential as the Rescorla-Wagner model.
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This paper was supported by research grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to S.S. and L.G.A. It is based, in part, on a presentation to the Winter Conference on Animal Learning, Winter Park, Colorado, 1995. The authors would like to thank Steven Flora for bringing the social psychology applications of the Rescorla-Wagner model to our attention.
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Siegel, S., Allan, L.G. The widespread influence of the Rescorla-Wagner model. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 3, 314–321 (1996). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210755
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210755