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Tony Dickinson

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Tony Dickinson
Born
Anthony Dickinson

(1944-02-17) 17 February 1944 (age 80)
Alma materUniversity of Manchester
Known forAnimal learning
Scientific career
FieldsComparative psychology
Institutions
WebsiteOfficial website Edit this at Wikidata

Anthony J. Dickinson, FRS (born 17 February 1944)[1] is a British psychologist, currently Emeritus Professor of Comparative Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge.[2] He is the author of the highly cited monograph Contemporary Animal Learning Theory and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003 for "internationally recognised contributions to our understanding of learning, memory, motivation and planning".[3]

Academic career

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Dickinson graduated in psychology from the University of Manchester in 1967[4] and earned a PhD at the University of Sussex in 1971,[4][5] continuing his academic career there as a postdoctoral assistant to Nicholas Mackintosh.[6] He moved to the Department of Experimental Psychology at Cambridge in 1977, where he lectured in associative learning.[6] He became professor in 1999 and has been emeritus professor and a fellow of Hughes Hall since his retirement in 2011.[1]

Research

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Dickinson's research focuses on learning, memory, motivation, and future planning in both humans and other animals,[2][3][7] and has influenced "incentive" theories of motivation and addiction.[8] His recent work includes theories of actions and habits,[7][9][10] drug addiction,[11] and hedonic pleasure.[12] His most highly cited paper is a 1998 Nature collaboration with Cambridge colleague Nicky Clayton on episodic-like memory in scrub jays.[13][14] Other notable collaborators include Trevor Robbins and Barry Everitt (on mechanisms of addiction),[11] Bernard Balleine (on motivation and hedonic pleasure),[12][15] John M. Pearce (with whom Dickinson worked on animal learning at both Sussex and Cambridge),[16]) and Wolfram Schultz (with whom Dickinson has worked on the neuronal mechanisms of rewards, punishments, and other stimuli).[17]

Honours and awards

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In 2001, Dickinson was elected the Sir Frederic Bartlett lecturer by the Experimental Psychology Society, an annual award recognizing "distinction in experimental psychology... over an extended period",[18] and delivered the 28th Bartlett Memorial Lecture on "Causal Learning" at Cambridge in July 2000.[19][20] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003.[3]

Selected publications

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Books

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  • Dickinson, Anthony (1980). Contemporary Animal Learning Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521234696. Retrieved 23 Feb 2024.

Articles

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Dickinson, Professor Anthony". Who's Who. 1 December 2007. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U45548.
  2. ^ a b "Professor Anthony Dickinson". Cambridge Neuroscience. University of Cambridge. Retrieved 12 September 2023.
  3. ^ a b c "Fellow Detail: Anthony Dickinson FRS". The Royal Society. Retrieved 12 September 2023.
  4. ^ a b "Tony Dickinson: Life Fellow". Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge. 23 October 2017. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  5. ^ Workman, Lance (6 February 2017). "'The turf wars in psychology have been as intellectually silly as they have been disastrous'". The Psychologist. The British Psychological Society. Retrieved 13 September 2023. Famous and infamous in equal measure, Sussex in the 1960s, sometimes called 'Oxford-by-the-Sea', was definitely the place to be! Amongst students, my contemporaries included Richard Morris, of Morris maze fame, Lorraine Tyler, Tony Dickinson and Graham Hitch, of Baddeley/Hitch working memory fame
  6. ^ a b Pearce, John (17 January 2018). "Nicholas John Seymour Mackintosh. 9 July 1935—8 February 2015". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 64: 299–316. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2017.0024.
  7. ^ a b Stafford, Tom (27 March 2012). "Sporting superstitions: Why do we have them?". BBC News. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  8. ^ Kent C. Berridge (2000). "Reward Learning: Reinforcements, Incentives, and Expectations". In Medin, Douglas (ed.). Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Advances in Research and Theory. Academic Press. p. 254. ISBN 978-0-08-052273-9. Retrieved 27 January 2024.
  9. ^ Perez OD, Dickinson A (2020). "A theory of actions and habits: The interaction of rate correlation and contiguity systems in free-operant behavior". Psychol Rev. 127 (6): 945–971. doi:10.1037/rev0000201. PMID 32406713.
  10. ^ Shah, Ashvin (12 November 2013). "Should Habits or Goals Direct Your Life? It Depends". MIND Guest Blog. Scientific American. Retrieved 16 September 2023.
  11. ^ a b Everitt, Barry J; Dickinson, Anthony; Robbins, Trevor W (October 2001). "The neuropsychological basis of addictive behaviour". Brain Research Reviews. 36 (2–3): 129–138. doi:10.1016/s0165-0173(01)00088-1. ISSN 0165-0173. PMID 11690609.
  12. ^ a b Dickinson, A; Balleine, B (2010). "4: Hedonics: The Cognitive–Motivational Interface". In Kringelbach, M; Berridge, K (eds.). Pleasures of the Brain. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 74–84. ISBN 978-0-19-533102-8. Retrieved 13 January 2024.
  13. ^ Nunez-Mulder, Laura. "A Day in the Life: A Scientist With Wings". Bluesci. Cambridge University. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  14. ^ Clayton NS, Dickinson A (1998). "Episodic-like memory during cache recovery by scrub jays". Nature. 395 (6699): 272–4. Bibcode:1998Natur.395..272C. doi:10.1038/26216. PMID 9751053.
  15. ^ Balleine, Bernard W; Dickinson, Anthony (April 1998). "Goal-directed instrumental action: contingency and incentive learning and their cortical substrates". Neuropharmacology. 37 (4–5): 407–419. doi:10.1016/S0028-3908(98)00033-1. ISSN 0028-3908. PMID 9704982.
  16. ^ Boakes, Robert A. (2023). Pavlov's Legacy: How and What Animals Learn. Cambridge University Press. pp. 293–294. ISBN 978-1-316-51207-4. Retrieved 17 September 2023.
  17. ^ Schultz W, Dickinson A (2000). "Neuronal coding of prediction errors". Annu Rev Neurosci. 23: 473–500. doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.23.1.473. PMID 10845072.
  18. ^ "Sir Frederic Bartlett Lectureship". Experimental Psychology Society. 17 October 2017. Retrieved 4 November 2023.
  19. ^ "Sir Frederic Bartlett Lectures". Experimental Psychology Society. 9 November 2017. Retrieved 4 November 2023.
  20. ^ Dickinson A (2001). "The 28th Bartlett Memorial Lecture. Causal learning: an associative analysis". Q J Exp Psychol B. 54 (1): 3–25. doi:10.1080/02724990042000010. PMID 11216300.
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