Tony Dickinson Explained

Tony Dickinson
Birth Date:1944 2, df=yes
Birth Name:Anthony Dickinson
Alma Mater:University of Manchester
Fields:Comparative psychology
Known For:Animal learning

Anthony J. Dickinson, (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

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

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

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

Books

Articles

Notes and References

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

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