update

that last entry was kind of embarrassing. guess it's worthwhile to keep a record of peaks in frustration.

anyways, kind of better now. with the data from the new rivalry experiment, i was 1) making an error in the processing, and 2) even with the error corrected it was a dumb analysis. i did the 'better' analysis, which i had had in mind but thought would be more complicated than it was (and which did require that that error was fixed), and got basically what i was looking for: before a target is reported as seen, there is an increase in its strength.

i then tried to expand it out, looking for effects in non-target locations. this also seems to work; i'll have to figure out how to separate the effects of spatial correlation in target strength, i.e. a part (maybe the major part) of these peripheral effects will be non-interesting because they will be firmly tied to the central target effect.

i also will need to make the analysis more specific, since each time a target is reported, it matters whether the transition is from a different report or an absence of report. this makes a difference in how the data are interpreted: 1) the increase in stimulus strength caused a dominance change (if there was an immediately previous report of a different target), 2) the increase in stimulus strength firmed up an indeterminate state (if the previous report was 'mixed'), or 3) the increase in stimulus strength made the current dominance state noticeable, i.e. made the target color visible.3

so, i expect that i will need much more data to make these sorts of different relationships clear. i will collect another half-hour's worth of data today, then i'll have more than an hour total. may be able to get something interesting out of that...