It has been suggested that certain real-world environments can have a restorative effect on an individual, as expressed in changes in cognitive performance and mood. Much of this research builds on Attention Restoration Theory (ART), which suggests that environments that have certain characteristics induce cognitive restoration via variations in attentional demands. Specifically, natural environments that require little top-down processing have a positive effect on cognitive performance, while city-like environments show no effect. We characterized the cognitive restoration effect further by examining (1) whether natural visual stimuli, such as blue spaces, were more likely to provide a restorative effect over urban visual stimuli, (2) if increasing immersion with environment-related sound produces a similar or superior effect, (3) if this effect extends to other cognitive tasks, such as the functional field of view (FFOV), and (4) if we could better understand this effect by providing controls beyond previous works. We had 202 participants complete a cognitive task battery, consisting of a reverse digit span task, the attention network task, and the FFOV task prior to and immediately after a restoration period. In the restoration period, participants were assigned to one of seven conditions in which they listened to natural or urban sounds, watched images of natural or urban environments, or a combination of both. Additionally, some participants were in a control group with exposure to neither picture nor sound. While we found some indication of practice effects, there were no differential effects of restoration observed in any of our cognitive tasks, regardless of condition. We did, however, find evidence that our nature images and sounds were more relaxing than their urban counterparts. Overall, our findings suggest that acute exposure to relaxing pictorial and auditory stimulus is insufficient to induce improvements in cognitive performance.

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This panel is comprised of current and prior student chapter officers, who will be discussing five selected themes influencing the success of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) student chapters. These themes include: 1) administrative support, 2) chapter branding and funds, 3) chapter collaboration, 4) social activities, and 5) educational activities for chapters. We believe that these five pillars are necessary in providing a solid foundation for a successful and engaged chapter. Within each section, we discuss challenges and successes that our chapters have experienced. Additionally, we end with recommendations and suggestions that we hope other student chapters – HFES and otherwise – can use to bolster their group. We hope that these recommendations can foster the future success of aspiring Human Factors and Ergonomics Society student chapters.

Many professional organizations have local student chapters that allow students to become involved in varying aspects of professional and academic life. While many schools have successful student chapters that field the needs of students successfully, other student chapters have struggled to accommodate their students to the best of their ability. In this paper, I present a series of anecdotal guidelines for the leadership of student chapters to consider in order to get the most out of each and every year. Although the focus of these guidelines are for improving existing student chapters, these guidelines can be used in the creation of new student chapters and in reviving student chapters that have become less active.

While driver distraction has become one of the most studied topics in safety and in human factors, the focus has remained on the traditional elements of driver distraction. In this study, we manipulated the difficulty level of riddles to determine whether the cognitive processing associated with solving them would affect driving performance. Twenty-eight participants completed a series of eighteen short drives while undistracted or listening to a hard or easy riddles. Frequency of pressing the brake pedal, deviation in lane position, and average speed were analyzed. The results indicated that there was a main effect of riddle difficulty on how often the brake pedal was pressed. No main effects of measures on speed maintenance and lane position were found. While these results indicate there may be some differences related to difficulty of solving a problem while driving, further work is required to better quantify the effect.