Research Summary


Dr. Peterson's research is focused on two overlaping questions: (1) How do voluntary and involuntary mechanisms interact to guide attention, and (2) how does attention affect how we process information in the environment?

  • How does attention affect our ability to perform multiple tasks at the same time?
  • How do bottom-up (stimulus driven) and top-down (voluntary) signals compete for the control of attention?
  • What is the relationship between overt attention (e.g. eye movements) and covert attention?
  • How does working memory interact with visual attention?
  • How does attentional control change as we age?
  • How does attention affect image extraction?


    • Recent Presentations

    Peterson, M. S. (August 2011). Guiding Attention. 2011 APA Annual Convention, Washington, DC.

    Tsai, Y. D., & Peterson, M. S. (June 2011). The effects of route guidance on spatial learning. 6th Annual Driving Symposium on Human Factors in Driver Assessment, Training and Vehicle Design (Driving Assessment), Lake Tahoe, CA.

    Peterson, M.S., & Wong, J.H. (May 2011). Spatial memory increases fixations to targets and onsets in a visual search task. 11th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL.

    Tsai, Y.D., Kang, S., & Peterson, M.S. (September 2010). Effects of Individual Differences on Visual Search Task Performance Proceedings of the Fifty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, San Francisco, CA.

    O'Connor, J.D., Peterson, M.S., & Parasuraman, R. (May 2010). The Effect of Extensive Repeated Viewing on Visual Recognition. 10th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL.

    Wong, J.H. & Peterson, M.S. (May 2010). The interaction between memorized objects and abrupt onsets in oculomotor capture: New insights in the architecture of oculomotor programming. 10th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL.

    O'Connor, J.D., Hixson, J., Thomas, J. M., Peterson, M.S., & Parasuraman, R. (April 2010). Adaptive design of visual perception experiments SPI:E Defense, Security, and Sensing

    O'Connor, J.D., Hixson, J., McKnight, P., Peterson, M.S., & Parasuraman, R. (April 2010). Resampling analysis of participant variance to improve the efficiency of sensor modeling perception experiments. SPI:E Defense, Security, and Sensing

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    Recent Publications

    Wong, J.H., & Peterson, M.S (in press). The interaction between memorized objects and abrupt onsets in oculomotor capture. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.

    Peterson, M.S., & Beck, M.R. (in press). Eye movements and memory. in I. Gilchrist & S. Everling (Eds.) Oxford Handbook on Eye Movements. Oxford, England.

    Beck, M.R., Angelone, B.L., Levin, D.T., Peterson, M.S., & Varakin, A. (2008). Selective attention during change detection leads to implicit learning for probable changes. Consciousness and Cognition. 17, 1192-1208.

    Wong, J. H., Peterson, M.S., & Thompson, J.C. (2008). Visual working memory capacity for objects from different categories: A face-specific maintenance effect. Cognition, 108, 719-731.

    Peterson, M.S., Beck, M.R., & Wong, J. H. (2008). Were you paying attention to where you looked? The role of executive working memory in visual search. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 372-377.

    Erickson, K. I., Colcombe, S. J., Wadhwa, R., Bherer, L., Peterson, M. S., Scalf, P., Kim, J. S., Alvarado, M., & Kramer, A. F. (2007). Training-induced functional activation changes in dual-task processing: an fMRI study. Cerebral Cortex, 17, 192-204.