Model-based pupil deconvolution reveals latent attentional dynamics
- 1Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, New Delhi
Abstract
Changes in pupil size have been widely used as an indirect measure of attention. However, attention engages on a faster timescale than the pupillary response. Therefore, the slow time course of the pupil response makes it difficult to distinguish attentional responses to stimuli presented in close temporal succession. Although signal deconvolution has been used in previous research to estimate latent attentional responses from the pupil signal, existing methods primarily model dilation without considering the visual stimulus evoked constriction phase of the pupil. Here, we introduce a dual-kernel deconvolution model that models constriction and dilation using separate impulse response functions. Using an RSVP paradigm with emotional faces as target stimuli, we demonstrate that the proposed model estimates latent attentional response despite substantial overlap in the measured pupil signal. Importantly, the recovered attentional response resembles the time course of attentional allocation previously predicted by several models of Attentional Blink. Together, these findings demonstrate that the dynamics of latent attentional episodes can be recovered from the pupil response with a temporal resolution previously obscured by the sluggishness of the pupillary response. The proposed method is also provided as a usable software package that serves as a general tool for investigating the temporal dynamics of attention in rapid visual paradigms.
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BibTeX
@misc{maity2026modelbased,
title = {{Model-based pupil deconvolution reveals latent attentional dynamics}},
author = {S. Maity and S. Mathot and S. B. Ray},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.30.755708},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.30.755708v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Model-based pupil deconvolution reveals latent attentional dynamics
AU - S. Maity
AU - S. Mathot
AU - S. B. Ray
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/30
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.30.755708
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.30.755708v1
AB - Changes in pupil size have been widely used as an indirect measure of attention. However, attention engages on a faster timescale than the pupillary response. Therefore, the slow time course of the pupil response makes it difficult to distinguish attentional responses to stimuli presented in close temporal succession. Although signal deconvolution has been used in previous research to estimate latent attentional responses from the pupil signal, existing methods primarily model dilation without considering the visual stimulus evoked constriction phase of the pupil. Here, we introduce a dual-kernel deconvolution model that models constriction and dilation using separate impulse response functions. Using an RSVP paradigm with emotional faces as target stimuli, we demonstrate that the proposed model estimates latent attentional response despite substantial overlap in the measured pupil signal. Importantly, the recovered attentional response resembles the time course of attentional allocation previously predicted by several models of Attentional Blink. Together, these findings demonstrate that the dynamics of latent attentional episodes can be recovered from the pupil response with a temporal resolution previously obscured by the sluggishness of the pupillary response. The proposed method is also provided as a usable software package that serves as a general tool for investigating the temporal dynamics of attention in rapid visual paradigms.
ER -