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Jeff Miller

Email jeffrey.miller@otago.ac.nz
Tel +64 3 479 7997
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Divided attention and redundancy gain

When people divide their attention between two possible input stimuli, they react more rapidly when both stimuli are presented simultaneously than when just one is presented (ie, “redundancy gain effect”). Surprisingly, this phenomenon is especially large when the two redundant stimuli are presented to the two disconnected cerebral hemispheres of split-brain individuals. This project is concerned with teasing apart sensory versus motor causes of the redundancy gain effect.

Performance impairments in dual-task situations

When we try to do two tasks at the same time, our performance almost always suffers in at least one of the tasks. This project investigates how our cognitive processes are affected in such dual-task situations, in order to characterise precisely the reasons for these impairments.

Consciousness and the brain

Psychological and psychophysiological data have the potential to shed light on the age-old mind-body problem by elucidating the relationship between our brain states and our conscious awareness. I have recently reactivated an old interest in this topic and am now carrying out new studies.

Understanding reaction time

The goal of this project is to characterise the time course of the cognitive processes used when we carry out simple perceptual and decision-making tasks. For example, I would like to find out in which cases the different mental processes operate in strict sequence, with each finishing before the next begins, and in which cases they operate in parallel (at least partly at the same time). This issue is important on theoretical grounds (what are the temporal relationships among the mental processing carrying out distinct information processing aspects of a task?), methodological grounds (what does a reaction time measurement reflect?), and applied grounds (how can we maximise performance by capitalising on the brain's capacity to perform multiple operations in parallel?). To find out, I manipulate various determinants of task difficulty and study both behaviour (response time and accuracy) and psychophysiological responses (EEG, EMG, response force).

Statistical methods

In all areas of my research, I look for ways to improve upon existing practices of data analysis. This has led to the development of some high specialised techniques for analysing reaction times, response choices, and EEG responses (often, with associated software), and to some general observations about the hypothesis testing scenario commonly used in psychology.

Further information on Professor Miller's research interests, publications, and statistical software

Publications

Miller, J. (2023). How many participants? How many trials? Maximizing the power of reaction time studies. Behavior Research Methods. Advance online publication. doi: 10.3758/s13428-023-02155-9
Journal - Research Article
Miller, J. (2023). Outlier exclusion procedures for reaction time analysis: The cures are generally worse than the disease. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/xge0001450
Journal - Research Article
Janczyk, M., & Miller, J. (2023). Generalization of unpredictable action effect features: Large individual differences with little on-average effect. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/17470218231184996
Journal - Research Article
Mittelstädt, V., Mackenzie, I. G., & Miller, J. (2022). Evidence of resource sharing in the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 48(11), 1279-1293. doi: 10.1037/xhp0001052
Journal - Research Article
Winter, A., Dudschig, C., Miller, J., Ulrich, R., & Kaup, B. (2022). The action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE): Meta-analysis of a benchmark finding for embodiment. Acta Psychologica, 230, 103712. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103712
Journal - Research Article
Smulders, F. T. Y., & Miller, J. O. (2012). The lateralized readiness potential. In S. J. Luck & E. S. Kappenman (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of event-related potential components. (pp. 209-229). New York: Oxford University Press.
Chapter in Book - Research
Janczyk, M., & Miller, J. (2023). Generalization of unpredictable action effect features: Large individual differences with little on-average effect. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/17470218231184996
Journal - Research Article
Miller, J. (2023). How many participants? How many trials? Maximizing the power of reaction time studies. Behavior Research Methods. Advance online publication. doi: 10.3758/s13428-023-02155-9
Journal - Research Article
Miller, J. (2023). Outlier exclusion procedures for reaction time analysis: The cures are generally worse than the disease. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/xge0001450
Journal - Research Article
Miller, J., & Ulrich, R. (2022). Optimizing research output: How can psychological research methods be improved? Annual Review of Psychology, 73, 691-718. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-020821-094927
Journal - Research Article
Mittelstädt, V., Mackenzie, I. G., & Miller, J. (2022). Evidence of resource sharing in the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 48(11), 1279-1293. doi: 10.1037/xhp0001052
Journal - Research Article
Mittelstädt, V., Mackenzie, I. G., Leuthold, H., & Miller, J. (2022). Electrophysiological evidence against parallel motor processing during multitasking. Psychophysiology, 59, e13951. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13951
Journal - Research Article
Mittelstädt, V., Miller, J., & Kiesel, A. (2022). Perceptual processing demands influence voluntary task choice. Cognition, 229, 105232. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105232
Journal - Research Article
Winter, A., Dudschig, C., Miller, J., Ulrich, R., & Kaup, B. (2022). The action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE): Meta-analysis of a benchmark finding for embodiment. Acta Psychologica, 230, 103712. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103712
Journal - Research Article
Bausenhart, K. M., Ulrich, R., & Miller, J. (2021). Effects of conflict trial proportion: A comparison of the Eriksen and Simon tasks. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 83, 810-836. doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-02164-2
Journal - Research Article
Miller, J. (2021). Percentile rank pooling: A simple nonparametric method for comparing group reaction time distributions with few trials. Behavior Research Methods, 53, 781-791. doi: 10.3758/s13428-020-01466-5
Journal - Research Article
Miller, J., & Tang, J. L. (2021). Effects of task probability on prioritized processing: Modulating the efficiency of parallel response selection. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 83, 356-388. doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-02143-7
Journal - Research Article
Miller, J., & Ulrich, R. (2021). A simple, general, and efficient method for sequential hypothesis testing: The independent segments procedure. Psychological Methods, 26(4), 486-497. doi: 10.1037/met0000350
Journal - Research Article
Mittelstaedt, V., Schaffernak, I., Miller, J., & Kiesel, A. (2021). Balancing cognitive and environmental constraints when deciding to switch tasks: Exploring self-reported task-selection strategies in self-organized multitasking. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(4), 598-609. doi: 10.1177/1747021820970079
Journal - Research Article
Monno, I., Spitzer, M., Miller, J., Dignath, D., & Kiesel, A. (2021). Scaling of the parameters for cost balancing in self-organized task switching. Journal of Cognition, 4(1), 8. doi: 10.5334/joc.137
Journal - Research Article
Ulrich, R., Prislan, L., & Miller, J. (2021). A bimodal extension of the Eriksen flanker task. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 83, 790-799. doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-02150-8
Journal - Research Article
Miller, J., & Kaup, B. (2020). Influences of task and attention on action verb congruence effects: How automatic are embodiment effects? Acta Psychologica, 210, 103155. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103155
Journal - Research Article
Mittelstädt, V., & Miller, J. (2020). Beyond mean reaction times: Combining distributional analyses with processing stage manipulations in the Simon task. Cognitive Psychology, 119, 101275. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2020.101275
Journal - Research Article
Rieger, T., & Miller, J. (2020). Are model parameters linked to processing stages? An empirical investigation for the ex-Gaussian, ex-Wald, and EZ diffusion models. Psychological Research, 84, 1683-1699. doi: 10.1007/s00426-019-01176-4
Journal - Research Article
Rieger, T., & Miller, J. (2020). Disentangling stimulus and response compatibility as potential sources of backward crosstalk. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 82, 3415-3431. doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-02039-6
Journal - Research Article
Ulrich, R., & Miller, J. (2020). Questionable research practices may have little effect on replicability. eLIFE, 9, e58237. doi: 10.7554/eLife.58237
Journal - Research Article
Berndt, E., Dudschig, C., Miller, J., & Kaup, B. (2019). A replication attempt of hemispheric differences in semantic-relatedness judgments (Zwaan & Yaxley, 2003). Acta Psychologica, 198, 102871. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.102871
Journal - Research Article
Miller, J., & Ulrich, R. (2019). The quest for an optimal alpha. PLoS ONE, 14(1), e0208631. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0208631
Journal - Research Article
Mittelstädt, V., Miller, J., & Kiesel, A. (2019). Linking task selection to task performance: Internal and predictable external processing constraints jointly influence voluntary task switching behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 45(12), 1529-1548. doi: 10.1037/xhp0000690
Journal - Research Article
Ellinghaus, R., & Miller, J. (2018). Delta plots with negative-going slopes as a potential marker of decreasing response activation in masked semantic priming. Psychological Research, 82(3), 590-599. doi: 10.1007/s00426-017-0844-z
Journal - Research Article
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