Brandon M. Turner is a Professor in the Psychology Department at The Ohio State University. He received a B.S. from Missouri State University in mathematics and psychology in 2008, a MAS in statistics from The Ohio State University in 2010, and a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 2011. He then spent one year as a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Irvine, and two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. His research interests include dynamic models of cognition and perceptual decision making, efficient methods for performing likelihood-free and likelihood-informed Bayesian inference, and unifying behavioral and neural explanations of cognition. His current focus is on understanding how selective attention causes "cognitive inertia", a pattern of information search that is dictated by previous allocations of attention, and how curated information (e.g., Google, YouTube) can harm or distort learning.

Selected Publications 

Weichart, E. R., Galdo, M. Sloutsky, V. M., and Turner, B. M. (in press). As Within, so Without; As Above, so Below: Common Mechanisms Can Support Between- and Within-Trial Learning Dynamics. In press at Psychological Review.

Galdo, M., Weichart, E. R., Sloutsky, V. M., and Turner, B. M. (2022). The Quest for Simplicity in Human Learning: Identifying the Constraints on Attention. Cognitive Psychology, 138, 101508.

Kirkpatrick, R. P., Turner, B. M., and Sederberg, P. B. (2021). Equal Evidence Perceptual Tasks Suggest a Key Role for Interactive Competition in Decision-Making. Psychological Review, 128(6), 1051–1087.

Kvam, P. D., and Turner, B. M. (2021). Reconciling similarity across models of continuous selections. Psychological Review, 128(4), 766–786.

Bahg, G., Evans, D., Galdo, M., and Turner, B. M. (2020). Gaussian process linking functions for mind, brain, and behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 117, 29398-29406

Weichart, E. R., Turner, B. M., and Sederberg, P. B. (2020). A model of dynamic, within-trial conflict resolution for decision making. Psychological Review, 127, 749-777.

Turner, B. M. (2019). Toward a common representational framework for adaptation. Psychological Review. 126, 660-692.

Turner, B. M., Schley, D. R., Muller, C., and Tsetsos, K. (2018). Competing models of multi-attribute, multi-alternative preferential choice. Psychological Review, 125, 329-362.

Turner, B. M. and Van Zandt, T. (2018). Approximating Bayesian inference through model simulation. Trends in Cognitive Science. 22, 826-840.

Turner, B. M., Van Maanen, L., Forstmann, B. U. (2015). Informing cognitive abstractions through neuroimaging: The Neural Drift Diffusion Model. Psychological Review. 122, 312-336.

Turner, B. M., Dennis, S., and Van Zandt, T. (2013). Likelihood-free Bayesian analysis of memory models. Psychological Review. 120, 667-678.

Turner, B. M., Van Zandt, T., and Brown, S. (2011). A dynamic, stimulus-driven model of signal detection. Psychological Review. 118, 583-613.