[6] After graduating from Earlham, he moved home for the summer before accepting a teaching position in psychology and education at William Penn College in Oskaloosa, Iowa.
[6][10] During his time here, much of his research focused on combined psychological and physiological measurements[6] His work was heavily influenced by the apparatus and experimental records Dodge had left behind.
One notable area of research while at Carnegie was Miles' work on the reaction time of football players in collaboration with his graduate student Bernice Courtney Graves who was better known as B.C.
[11][12][13] In line with Miles' love of apparatuses, the two constructed an apparatus to measure the effects of variations in signal calling on the speed at which the lineman moved in reaction to the signal for snapping the ball[9] While at the Carnegie Nutrition Laboratory, Miles was inspired by Dodge's work and conducted a host of important research on the psychological effects of low and moderate dose alcohol.
Miles created various apparatuses to test the effects of alcohol including the pursuit pendulum[14] to measure eye motion and response times of intoxicated subjects.
[16] In 1917 before prohibition went into effect in 1920, President Woodrow Wilson cut the grain allotment to brewers and distillers maintaining that beer be reduced so that it could not contain more than 2.75% alcohol by weight, which is about 3.44% by volume today.
[16] Additionally, with the start of World War I, he became involved with war-related projects and, in collaboration with Dodge, designed gas masks and studied the effects of severely restricted food intake.
[16] As such, from April to August 1920 Miles visited 57 psychology and physiology laboratories and institutes across Europe to observe, record, and interact with researchers.
[16] Not surprisingly, he continued researching a variety of topics and developed a range of apparatuses including the two-story rat maze while at Stanford.
[6][9][16] Indeed, this work helped him build a reputation among his peers and led to his nomination and election as president of the American Psychological Association in 1932.
[16][22] This study included over 2,000 subjects from ages 6 to 95 who completed questionnaires, reaction time tasks, motor skills tests, and various anthropometric and physiological measures.
He came to Yale at the request of Dodge who asked Miles is there was "any possibility of inducing you to come here in a position parallel with mine with the expectation that within a few years you will take my place".
Although his appointment was primarily at the Department of Psychology, his affiliation with the Medical School influenced his research AJ[6] His early years at Yale were focused on publishing his findings from the Stanford Later Maturity Study.
[6][24] His work published from data collected at Yale were minor and highly specialized [6][24] However, when World War II began Miles again became involved in war-related projects.
Ernest Hilgard heard about a visiting psychologist position at the University of Istanbul and recommended this to Miles given his love of travel.
Most notably, Miles supervised a dissertation of a woman who eventually accepted a position on the teaching staff there and the two edited a volume called the Istanbul Studies in Experimental Psychology.