AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Rescorla (May 9, 1940-March 24, 2020) was an American psychologist who specialized in the involvement of cognitive processes in classical conditioning focusing on animal learning and behavior. Rescorla was a Professor Emeritus of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn).

Detailed explanation-2: -Rescorla provided a bridge between behaviorism, the predominant theory in psychology in the mid 20th century, and cognitive science, its successor as the major framework for late 20th century psychology. Dr. Rescorla was an exquisite methodologist who caused the field to rethink the nature of control groups.

Detailed explanation-3: -The psychologist Robert Rescorla showed that in classical conditioning, pairing two stimuli doesn’t always produce the same level of conditioning. Conditioning works better if the conditioned stimulus acts as a reliable signal that predicts the appearance of the unconditioned stimulus.

Detailed explanation-4: -A central tenet of Rescorla and Wagner’s model of associative learning is that the reinforcement value of a paired trial diminishes as the associative strength between the presented stimuli increases.

Detailed explanation-5: -John Watson claimed that the process of classical conditioning was able to explain every aspect of human psychology. He states that everything we encounter (e.g. speech, emotions) are patterns that we have produced through stimulus and response.