Single‐Trial Inference on Visual Attention

In this paper we take a step towards single‐trial behavioral modeling within a Theory of Visual Attention (TVA). In selective attention tasks, such as the Partial Report paradigm, the subject is asked to ignore distractors and only report stimuli that belong to the target class. Nothing about a distractor is observed directly in the subject’s overt behavior, hence behavioral modeling of such trials involves out‐marginalizing the variables that represent the distractors’ influence on behavior. In this paper we derive equations for inferring a latent representation of the distractors on a Partial Report trial. This result retrodicts a latent attentional state of the subject using the observed response from that particular trial and thus differs from other predictions made with TVA which are based on expected values of observed variables. We show an example of the result in single‐trial analysis of an occipital EEG component.