[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".

[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] 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.