His research is on visual attention and related areas, such as eye movements, working memory, multitasking, and visual cognition. He received his PhD. from the University of Kansas followed by postdoctoral training in psychophysiology at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Peterson's articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals, such as Psychological Science, Cognition, Perception and Psychophysics, and Cerebral Cortex. Additionally, his work has been cited in The Wall Street Journal, Science Daily, and The Atlantic Monthly. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the United States Army, and the United States Air Force.