His research focuses on developing tools for investigating human visual attention and short-term memory by using mathematical modeling, eye tracking, and EEG and contributes to the continuous development of the Theory of Visual Attention (TVA; see Bundesen, Vangkilde & Petersen, 2014 for latest developments). A major focus of his research has been on the development of paradigms to measure temporal dynamics of visual attention (see Petersen & Kyllingsbæk, 2013) and he has developed the first quantitative stochastic model explaining the attentional dwell-time phenomenon (see Petersen et. al. 2012, 2013). The model is an elegant extension of the TVA with a large potential not only for explaining behavioral data but also for bridging cognition and neurophysiology.