Courses

Curriculum Vitae

Listing of Publications (some downloadable)

Visual Attention and Cognition Lab

Code

Matt Peterson received his Ph.D.in Experimental Psychology with a Quantitative minor from the University of Kansas under the guidance of James Juola. After graduate school, he pursued his interests in visual attention at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, where he collaborated with Art Kramer and Dave Irwin, among others. He is currently a faculty member with the Applied Cognition group in the Department of Psychology at George Mason University.

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?

• Wong, J.H., & Peterson, M.S. (to be presented May 2008). Object similarity in visual working memory: A face-specific memory effect. 8th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL.
• Smith, C.S., Tsai, Y.D., Wong, J.H., & Peterson, M.S. (to be presented May 2008). More than meets the eye: Investigating expert and novice differences in action video games. 8th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL.
• Tsai, Y. D., & Peterson, M. S. (to be presented April 2008). Investigating the distinctions between task-switching and interruptions on working memory performance. 2008 Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, San Francisco, CA.
• Brooks, D.T., Smith, C.F., Tsai, Y.D., Wong, J.H., & Peterson, M.S. to be presented (March 2008). The effect of videogame expertise on eye movements and visual attention. APA Division 21/19 Mid-year Meeting, Fairfax, VA.

• Peterson, M.S., Beck, M.R., & Wong, J. H. (in press). Were you paying attention to where you looked? The role of executive working memory in visual search. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
• Wong, J. H., Peterson, M.S., & Hillstrom, A. P. (in press). Smoothly morphing semantic and structural information is insufficient for oculomotor capture. Journal of Vision.
• Bherer, L., Kramer, A.F., Peterson, M.S., Colcombe, S., Erickson, K. & Becic, E. (in press). Transfer effects in task-set cost and dual-task cost after dual-task training in older and younger adults: Further evidence for cognitive plasticity in attentional control in late adulthood. Experimental Aging Research.
  
• Beck, M.R., Peterson, M.S., & Angelone, B. L. (2007). The roles of encoding, retrieval, and awareness in change detection. Memory and Cognition, 34, 610-620.
  
• 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.
  
• 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 plasticity in older adults: effects of training on hemispheric asymmetry. Neurobiology of Aging, 28, 272-83.
  
• Peterson, M.S., Beck, M.R., & Vomela, M. (2007) Visual search is guided by prospective and retrospective memory. Perception and Psychophysics, 69(1), 123-135

Last updated: 9-3-2007 by msp.