Jim Grange

Biography

I joined Keele as a Lecturer in July 2010, being promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2016. From 2017-2020 I was Head of School for Psychology. Prior to coming to Keele, I completed my BSc, MSc, and PhD at Bangor University in North Wales. I am an experimental cognitive psychologist, interested in cognitive control processes—that is, the mechanisms that enable the human mind to control itself.

The mission of my lab’s work is to conduct fundamental research to understand cognitive control processes, and to then use this knowledge to tackle applied and clinical questions. Please visit my personal website to find out more about my research program, and email me if you are interested in getting involved; I am always interested to hear from keen students wishing to pursue graduate studies (MSc, PhD) in my lab.

www.jimgrange.org

My CV can be downloaded here.

Research and scholarship

My research interests are centred on three main topics: (1) cognitive control during task switching; (2) application & development of cognitive models; and (3) issues surrounding replication in psychological science.

1) Cognitive Control During Task Switching

Humans live in an increasingly busy, multi-task environment which often requires frequent switching between different cognitive operations and tasks. Driving, for example, presents us with an incredibly complex environment wherein many sub-tasks—e.g. speed monitoring, interpretation of abstract road signs, planning the best route etc.—must be organised and deployed appropriately in order to arrive at our destination safely. Yet, despite the complexity, humans are able to act efficiently in a goal-directed manner. The question thus arises as to how humans are able to organise and control the selection and deployment of on-going cognitive processes to ensure successful performance in multi-task environments.

My research focuses on how this control is achieved. Since my PhD I have been very interested in one mechanism thought to aid cognitive control during task switching: inhibition of competing tasks. When switching from one task to another, the persisting activation of the now-irrelevant task can interfere with the selection of the new task. There is now good evidence that the cognitive system overcomes this problem by inhibiting (suppressing) the activation of recently performed tasks, enabling efficient selection of the new task.

My research is interested in the nature of this inhibitory process, and focuses on several as-yet unresolved questions: What aspects of a task become inhibited? How does the system know what/when to inhibit? What drives individual differences in task inhibition? Is inhibition affected by healthy ageing?

2) Application & Development of Cognitive Models

The ultimate goal in the field of cognitive science/psychology is to understand the workings of the human/animal mind. How do we selectively attend to goal-relevant stimuli? How do we remember such vast amounts of information? How do we plan and co-ordinate complex plans of action? Researchers address these problems by describing behaviour, through observation and experimentation. At a higher level, researchers aim to predict behaviour: Only a solid understanding of a phenomenon allows successful prediction of future behaviour in differing contexts. Prediction is a key tool for assessing whether our understanding of a phenomenon is sufficient.

Understanding cognitive phenomena is challenging as the human mind is impossibly complex; thus, researchers develop models of cognition, which abstract away from unnecessary details whilst emphasising details thought to underlie the phenomena under investigation. Examination of the model’s behaviour provides a window onto the more complex system that it is representing, increasing our understanding of that system.

Inspired by several outstanding theorists in my field, I am interested in applying models of cognition to experimental data to understand human behaviour in more detail. In particular, recent work in my lab has focussed on developing and testing models of inhibition during task switching. I am also interested in extending extant models of task switching, as well as integrating task switching models with models that address other cognitive processes (such as memory models).

3) Replication in Psychological Science

Replication is the most important statistic. If an experimental effect does not replicate—either in your own lab or independently—then trust in that effect should rightly diminish. Thus, assessing the reproducibility of an effect should rightly be among the priorities of psychological scientists. Despite the importance, replication attempts in psychology are rare, likely due to the enhanced incentive (e.g. publications, grant income) to introduce new ideas to the field rather than assess the validity of old ones.

I am an active member of the Reproducibility Project, an open, large-scale, world-wide collaborative effort to systematically examine the rate and predictors of reproducibility in psychological science. The collaboration have organised to openly and transparently replicate all studies published in three prominent psychology journals in 2008, with the aim of calculating an empirical rate of replication, as well as investigating factors that predict reproducibility.

As well as this collaborative Reproducibility Project, I also—together with my students—conduct replication attempts of published studies in the field of cognitive control during task switching. Going forward, these replications will make use of the "Replication Recipe", which was developed in collaboration with others from the Open Science Collaboration (Brandt et al., 2014).

Teaching

I teach on a variety of Undergraduate and Postgraduate modules. My primary responsibilities are:

Programme Leader for the MSc in Cognition & Cognitive Neuroscience
Module Leader for PSY-20023: Cognitive Neuroscience
Module Leader for PSY-20044: Statistics for Psychology
Module Leader for PSY-40075: Advanced Study in Cognition & Cognitive Neuroscience
Module Team Member for PSY-40053 Advanced Cognitive Neuroscience Research Methods
Module Team Member for PSY-40039 Advanced Research Skills and Design

Further information

I currently hold editorial duties at the following academic journals:

Frontiers in Cognitive Psychology (Action Editor)
Nature's Scientific Reports (Action Editor)
Collabra (Action Editor)
Frontiers in Cognitive Science (Review Editor)

Publications

Grange, J.A. & Rydon-Grange, M. (in press). Computational modelling of attentional selectivity in depression reveals perceptual deficits. Psychological Medicine. [Preprint] [PDF] [Data] [Code]
Sherman, S. & Grange, J.A. (2020). Exploring the impact of mindfulness on false-memory susceptibility. Psychological Science, 31, 968-977. [PDF] [Data] [Code]
Kowalczyk, A. & Grange, J.A. (2020). The effect of episodic retrieval on inhibition in task switching: A diffusion model analysis. Psychological Research, 84, 1965-1999. [Preprint] [PDF] [Data] [Code]
Davenport, B., Jackson, M., Grange, J.A., & Rydon-Grange, M. (2019). Beliefs about voices in voice-hearers: The role of schema functioning. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 48, 584-597. [PDF]
Coetzer, R., Rydon-Grange, M., Roberts, C., & Grange, J.A. (2019). Cognitive function, self-awareness, and neuroimaging findings in OCD-type presentations after Traumatic Brain Injury. Panamerican Journal of Neuropsychology, 13, 15-28. [PDF]
Schuch, S. & Grange, J.A. (2019). Increased cognitive control after task conflict? Investigating the n–3 effect in task switching. Psychological Research, 83, 1703-1721. [PDF]
Grange, J.A., & Becker, R. (2019). The effect of aging on response congruency in task switching: A meta-analysis. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 74, 389-396. [Preprint] [PDF] [Data & Code]
Grange, J.A., Kedra, P., & Walker, A. (2019). The effect of practice on inhibition in task switching: Controlling for episodic retrieval. Acta Psychologica, 192, 59-72. [Preprint] [PDF] [Data & Code]
Grange, J.A. (2018). Does task activation in task switching influence inhibition or episodic interference? Experimental Psychology, 65, 393-404. [Preprint] [PDF] [Data & Code]
Martini, A., Dal Lago, D., Edelstyn, N.M.J., Grange, J.A., & Tamburin, S. (2018). Impulse control disorder in Parkinson's disease: A meta-analysis of cognitive, affective, and motivational correlates. Frontiers in Neurology, 9:654. [PDF]
Lakens, D., Adolfi, F., Albers, C.,… …Grange, J.A.,… ….& Zwaan, R. (2018). Justify your alpha. Nature Human Behavior, 2, 168-171. [PDF]
Martini, A., Ellis, S.J., Grange, J.A., Tamburin, S., Dal Lago, D., Vianello, G., & Edelstyn, N.M.J. (2018). Risky decision-making and affective features of impulse control disorder in Parkinson’s disease. Journal of Neural Transmission, 125, 131-143. [PDF]
Grange, J.A., Kowalczyk, A.W., & O'Loughlin, R. (2017). The effect of episodic retrieval on inhibition in task switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 43, 1568–1583. [PDF] [Data & Code]
Kowalczyk, A.W. & Grange, J.A. (2017). Inhibition in task switching: The reliability of the n–2 repetition cost. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70, 2419–2433. [PDF] [Data & Code]
Stephens, R., Holloway, K., Grange, J.A., Owen, L., Jones, K., & Kruisselbrink, D. (2017). Does familial risk for alcohol use disorder predict alcohol hangover? Psychopharmacology, 234, 1795–1802. [PDF]
Grange, J.A, Stephens, R., Jones, K., & Owen, L. (2016). The effect of alcohol hangover on choice response time. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 30, 654–661. [PDF] [Data & Code]
Grange, J.A. (2016). Temporal distinctiveness in task switching: Assessing the mixture distribution assumption. Frontiers in Cognition, 7:251. [PDF] [Data & Code]
Edelstyn, N.M.J., Grange, J.A., Ellis, S.J., & Mayes, A.M. (2016). A deficit in familiarity-driven recognition in a right-sided mediodorsal thalamic lesion patient. Neuropsychology, 30, 213–224.
Anderson, C. J.,Bahník, Š. , Barnett-Cowan, M., Bosco, F. A., Chandler, J., Chartier, C. R., Cheung, F., Christopherson, C. D., Cordes, A., Cremata, E. J., Della Penna, N., Estel, V., Fedor, A., Fitneva, S. A., Frank, M. C., Grange, J. A., Hartshorne, J. K., Hasselman, F., Henninger, F., Jonas, K. J., Lai, C. K., Levitan, C. A., Miller, J. K., Moore, K. S., Meixner, J. M., Munafò, M. R., Neijenhuijs, K. I., Nilsonne, G., Nosek, B. A., Plessow, F., Prenoveau, J. M., Ricker, A. A., Schmidt, K., Spies, J. R., Stieger, S., Strohminger, N., Sullivan, G. B., van Aert, R. C. M., van Assen, M. A. L. M., van der Hulst, M., Vanpaemel, W., Vianello, M., Voracek, M., & Zuni, K. (2016). Response to a comment on “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science”. Science, 351, 1037.
Grange, J.A. (2016). flankr: An R package implementing computational models of attentional selectivity. Behavior Research Methods, 48, 528-541. [PDF] [Model Code]
Grange, J.A. (2016). Time for insulting reviews to stop. The Psychologist, 28(3), 158. [Online Link]
Open Science Collaboration. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349, 943.
Schuch, S. & Grange, J.A. (2015). The effect of n–3 on n–2 repetition costs in task switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 41, 760-767. Both authors contributed equally to this work.
Grange, J.A. & Juvina, I. (2015). The effect of practice on n–2 repetition costs in set switching. Acta Psychologica, 154, 14-25.
Grange, J.A. & Cross, E. (2015). Can time-based decay explain temporal distinctiveness effects in task switching? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68, 19-45.
Grange, J.A. & Houghton, G. (2014). Task Switching and Cognitive Control. New York, NY:Oxford University Press. [Online Link]
Grange, J.A. & Houghton, G. (2014). Task switching and cognitive control: An introduction. To appear in J. A. Grange & G. Houghton (Eds.), Task Switching and Cognitive Control. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [Online Link]
Grange, J.A. & Houghton, G. (2014). Models of cognitive control in task switching. To appear in J. A. Grange & G. Houghton (Eds.), Task Switching and Cognitive Control. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [Online Link]
Stephens, R., Grange, J.A., Jones, K., & Owen, L. (2014). A critical analysis of alcohol hangover research methodology for surveys or studies of effects on cognition. Psychopharmacology, 231, 2223-2236.
Brandt, M.J., IJzerman, H., Dijksterhuis, A., Farach, F., Geller, J., Giner-Sorolla, R., Grange, J.A., Perugini, M., Spies, J., & van't Veer, A. (2014). The replication recipe: What makes for a convincing replication? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 50, 217-224.
Open Science Collaboration. (2013). The Reproducibility Project: A model of large-scale collaboration for empirical research on reproducibility. In V. Stodden, F. Leisch, & R. Peng (Eds.), Implementing Reproducible Computational Research (A Volume in the R Series). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. [Online link at SSRN]
Grange, J.A. (2013). What's all this business about Bayes? PsyPAG Quarterly, 89, 12-13. [online link]
Grange, J.A., Juvina, I., & Houghton, G. (2013). On costs and benefits of n-2 repetitions in task switching: towards a behavioural marker of cognitive inhibition. Psychological Research, 77, 211-222.
Open Science Collaboration. (2012). An open, large-scale, collaborative effort to estimate the reproducibility of psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 657-670.
Grange, J.A., Lody, A., & Bratt, S. (2012). Cost–benefit and distributional analyses of Accessory Stimuli. Psychological Research, 76, 626-633.
Juvina, I., Grange, J.A., & Lebiere, C. (2011). From repetition-suppression in Stroop to backward inhibition in task switching: An example of model reusability. In A. V. Samsonovich & K. R. Johannsdottir (Eds.), Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, Volume 233: Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures, IOS Press (pp. 168-173).
Houghton, G., & Grange, J.A. (2011). CDF-XL: Computing cumulative distribution functions of reaction time data in Excel. Behaviour Research Methods, 43, 1023-1032.
Grange, J.A., & Houghton, G. (2011). Task preparation and task inhibition: A comment on Koch, Gade, Schuch, & Philipp (2010). Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 211-216 .
Grange, J.A. (2011). A review of the book: "How to write a lot: A practical guide to productive academic writing". PsyPAG Quarterly, 78, 38-39.
Grange, J.A. (2011). A review of the book: "Public speaking for psychologists: A light-hearted guide to research presentations, job talks, and other opportunities to embarrass yourself". The Psychologist.
Grange, J.A. (2011). Control of working memory contents during task switching. In E.S. Levin (Ed.), Working memory: Capacity, Development, & improvement techniques. New York: Nova Science Publishers (pp. 477-512).
Grange, J.A., & Houghton, G. (2010). Heightened conflict in cue-target translation increases backward inhibition in set switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 36, 1003-1009.
Grange, J.A., & Houghton, G. (2010). Cue-switch costs in task switching: Cue priming or control processes? Psychological Research, 74, 481-490.
Grange, J.A., & Houghton, G. (2009). Temporal cue-target overlap is not essential for backward inhibition in task switching. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 2069-2080.
Houghton, G., Pritchard, R., & Grange, J.A. (2009). The role of cue-target translation in backward inhibition of attentional set. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 35, 466-476.

Roles

University Academic Lead for Research Integrity & Improvement
Research Lead: Cognition, Brain, & Behaviour Group
Programme Lead: MSc Cognition & Cognitive Neuroscience
Research Group Leader (Cognition, Brain, & Behaviour Research Group)

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Dr Jim Grange