All News

Fall 2022 applications for admission to the PHD and MA in Psychology for the 2022-2023 Academic Year are now available for all concentrations

Read the latest information on Mason's 2020 Winter Graduation ceremony, as well as CHSS events to celebrate our graduates!

Elizabeth Phillips, Assistant Professor, Psychology, Human Factors/Applied Cognition, is conducting a study to examine two aspects of norm violation response in human-robot teams.

All 2020 graduates, from spring, summer, and fall, are invited to participate in George Mason University’s 2020 Winter Graduation on Thursday, December 17, at 2:00 pm, on GMU-TV. Following the ceremony, CHSS graduates are invited to join the college for its own festivities.

Mason’s psychology program is No. 23 nationally among public universities and No. 47 overall in the country. The program also saw a big improvement in its worldwide ranking, going from the 251-300 group to the 126-150 group.

Dr. Daniel Gartenberg, HFAC alum is working on tech that stimulates deep sleep, the most regenerative stage which (among other wonderful things) might help us consolidate our memories and form our personalities. Find out more about how playing sounds that mirror brain waves during this stage might lead to deeper sleep -- and its potential benefits on our health, memory and ability to learn.

The Center for Advancement of Human-Machine Partnership (CAHMP) will explore the possibilities for human-machine interaction, and includes faculty members from the Higher Education Program and the Departments of Psychology and Philosophy.

The work of Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition lab is central to the NPR Hidden Brain podcast on cultivating deep work.

Dr. Pam Greenwood, a cognitive scientist in the HFAC Department, featured in WIRED article, 'Could a Videogame Strengthen your Aging Brain?'

Carryl Baldwin, faculty member in the Department of Psychology, is part of a team that measured the amount of driver mind-wandering that occurred during routine travels. The research revealed a shocking number of drivers were distracted in this way.

“It is extremely valuable to have a range of perspectives and expertise in helping the government address challenges related to health information technology,” Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, said.

The mood in EagleBank Arena was lively on May 18 and 19, as the College of Humanities and Social Sciences held its degree celebration ceremonies. Congratulations again to all of our graduates! We are pleased to welcome you to an impressive community of alumni, made only stronger by the class of 2017.

Read about Sam's research on hat brims, shark attacks, and UFO sightings!

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is pleased to announce the May 2017 degree celebrations will be led by two outstanding alumni: chief historian for the White House Historical Association, Edward Lengel, and Lt. Col. Suzanne Devlin, a former acting chief of police for the Fairfax County Police Department and the current supervisor of safety and security for Loudoun County Public Schools.

Watch how Director of the HFAC program, Dr. Carryl Baldwin, designed the most annoying sound possible to warn drivers of head-on collisions.

Find out what exciting new developments are happening in Dr. Eva Wiese's Mind Perception and Embodied Cognition lab!

Check out Dr. Lee's research on how driving can be used to monitor ADHD, funded on a $891,135 four-year grant from the National Science Foundation.

Fly Fleet, a company headed by CEO & HFAC Alumnus Daniel Gartenberg, announced winners of annual design competition where competitors practice product development focused on User Experience (UX), Human Factors, and User-Centered Design.

Read what Dr. Kashdan and Dr. McKnight have learned about citing literature in your research from their recent article featured in Psychology Today!

Dr. Baldwin, a human factors psychologist, constructs sounds in a lab, tests those sounds on human subjects to see if they are communicating the intended meaning, and ensures they are appropriate for use as alarms in household, aviation, medical, and automotive settings.

"Extensive studies have shown for decades that humans don’t do well “monitoring” situations. Studies on radar operators show their attention often is compromised within 15 minutes by external factors such as conversation or internal factors such as daydreaming."

Human factors psychologist Dr. Eva Wiese and her students research how to make interactions with robots feel more human.

Scientific American reports on changes to the marketing of Lumosity's brain training site following a report from George Mason researchers questioning its efficacy, along with FTC refunds to its customers. Faculty and students from the Department of Psychology found evidence of a placebo effect on the brain-training games' results.

PhD student Ryan McGarry featured in The Washington Post for research on driver's emotions in semiautonomous and rapidly-accelerating vehicles.

Studies showing that brain-training games work may be inherently biased from selecting participants who expected to get smarter by playing brain games, according to Cyrus Foroughi, who co-authored the latest research pointing to evidence of a placebo effect.

NBC's Today Show's Rossen Reports team reviewed and praised the Fleet app, which was developed in part by recent human factors alumni Daniel Gartenberg and Melissa Smith, along with former Mason faculty member Robert Youmans.

HFES, George Mason University Student Chapter, and the Potomac Chapter were proud to be one of more than 3,000 exhibitors at the 4th Annual USA Science and Engineering Festival, in Washington, D.C., the largest national STEM event in the country.

Nicole Werner, received an award for the best paper published in Applied Ergonomics in 2015. The paper, “Interruptions in the wild: Development of a sociotechnical systems model of interruptions in the emergency department through a systematic review,” offers an understanding of interruptions and how they factor into complex real-world environments.

The present manuscript wishes to be the authors’ personal honor to the memory of Raja Parasuraman, as a tribute to his scientific competence, and the contribution that he gave to our research projects in these years of proficient collaboration. RP will always be present as a driving force inspiring us all to succeed.

The 1st International Conference of Neuroergonomics, to be held in Paris, France, will be dedicated to the memory of the late Mason professor Dr. Raja Parasuraman, founder of Neuroergonomics. The conference will also award two Parasuraman prizes for the best student paper and the best senior paper.

“There are new categories of patient safety errors” in emergency rooms that didn’t exist before the push to use electronic record systems, said Raj Ratwani, who researches health care safety and is the scientific director for MedStar Health’s National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare in Washington, D.C.

The APA Science Student Council established the Early Graduate Student Researcher Award in 2004 to recognize students who have demonstrated outstanding research ability early in their graduate careers.

STATS asked Patrick McKnight, a statistician at GMU, to look at one of the fundamental mechanistic issues in the BPA controversy, the idea that the chemical can have adverse impacts at very low doses but not at higher doses, which if true would invalidate the widespread scientific view that the risk of harm from chemicals is generally monotone.

The late Dr. Raja Parasuraman is the well deserved but, sadly, posthumous, recipient of the Jack A. Kraft Innovator Award for 2015. He linked the fields of neuroscience and ergonomics, creating the emerging field of neuroergonomics to enhance the understanding of brain function and behavior.

HFES awards Raja Parasuraman, Brian Kidwell, Ryan Olmstead, Ming-Kuan Lin, Ryan Jankord, and Pamela Greenwood for best paper

Blumberg was featured in a story on his research using electric brain stimulation to help people overcome distractions at work.

Our HFAC students are busy at work or pursuing internship experiences. Here is a brief list highlighting these accomplishments.

This chapter illustrates the destructive potential of interruptions in safety-critical environments. The impact that interruptions have on performance has been measured in a number of ways. The chapter discusses the impact on time to complete the primary task, errors, and overall quality.

This APA Handbook of Human Systems Integration is a practical tool for both students and professionals. It is intended to sensitize readers to basic design issues, enhance their understanding of the influence of these issues, and guide them in appropriately combining human performance with a system's numerous interacting components.

Spencer Kohn recently won the HFES "Mobile Health Applications for Consumers" student design competition with an app, Hermes, that allows patient-controlled medical record sharing. HFES called the app "intuitive and simple to use," citing sharing settings that can be created in moments with little information required from the user.

This special award, new this year, recognizes and rewards outstanding Mason graduate students who mentor undergraduate students on their research and creative activities, and who help to foster a culture of student scholarship in support of Mason's Students as Scholars initiative

Cyrus Foroughi, Dr. Nicole Werner, Daniela Barragan, and Dr. Debbie Boehm-Davis' recent article, Interruptions Disrupt Reading Comprehension published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, featured in APA Particularly Exciting Experiments in Psychology (PeePs) issue.

The Outstanding Team Performance Award went to the “Green Team” for their innovative and thorough incorporations of human factors and usability principles into the redesign of an employee on-boarding system.

Over the years, Raja has been a flawless exemplar of the very best of our discipline and a role model for scientists in general. Whenever one was in Raja's presence, there was a quiet and yet highly charged sense that he was someone very special and yet at the same time approachable, helpful, and always willing to learn.

George Mason University mourns the loss of a scholar, researcher, colleague, and mentor, University Professor Raja Parasuraman. He was well respected in the fields of human factors and neuroscience and was a valued member of Mason's Department of Psychology.

The Mason team developed a website (similar to Facebook) called the "Family Room." It can be used for family members to keep up with the primary caregiver and the older adult during the caregiving process. There is also a section for medical records (where they have more privacy/security built in).

Psychologist Carryl Baldwin of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, USA, and colleagues there and at the Sentara Norfolk General Sleep Center, emphasize how fatigue poses a persistent threat to transportation safety.

GMU's Human Factors Students will have 12 hours to tackle real-world projects presented by professional usability companies. Students will leverage their backgrounds in human performance and cognition along with their knowledge of usability and task analysis to develop innovative and valuable solutions.

When was the last time you were interrupted in the middle of an important conversation or writing an email, completely derailing your train of thought? This was the basis for a new line of research being explored by Cyrus Foroughi, a doctoral student at George Mason University – how do interruptions affect performance beyond time and error?

The mission of WTS is to “transform the transportation industry through the advancement of women.” At WTS, we feel that education is a vital tool to facilitate that advancement, and every year, WTS awards scholarships to deserving young women who are studying transportation at undergraduate and graduate programs.

This year, the Patient Safety Department at Children's National Medical Center and GMU will host the Human Factors Challenge, a 4-hour seminar featuring games and design sessions to teach medical professionals about HF/E principles.

Undergraduates engaged in lab research, learned about policy and advocacy, and received professional development training at the Psychology Department of George Mason University

Considering how important writing is and that we write daily, whether it be a report, an essay, or an important email, the latest data from our study should get you thinking about how you work. Not only will interruptions increase the time it takes you to finish writing, but they also could reduce the quality of what you are writing.

Research by Dr. Parasuraman featured in Scientific American investigates how a genetic variant that keeps dopamine levels high could lead to personalized training and also benefit personnel in ERs and air traffic control towers.

Raja Parasuraman, a George Mason University psychology professor who is advising an Intelligence Advanced Research Project Agency (IARPA) team, puts it, “The end goal is to improve fluid intelligence—that is, to make people smarter.”

Mason researchers found that even brief work distractions, especially while writing, decrease overall production and quality.

“People don’t realize how disruptive interruptions can be,” said Cyrus Foroughi, coauthor of “Do Interruptions Affect Quality of Work?” Foroughi, with coauthors Nicole Werner, Erik Nelson, and Deborah Boehm-Davis, designed a study assessing how varying levels of interruption affected writing quality in an essay project.

Fast Company, the New Republic, and ScienceCodex.com are reporting on the study by Mason PhD candidate Cyrus Foroughi (along with co-authors Nicole Werner, Erik Nelson, and college dean Deborah Boehm-Davis), that measures the impact of interruptions on the quality of work.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

We examined whether a gene known to influence dopamine availability in the prefrontal cortex is associated with individual differences in learning a supervisory control task.

We describe a novel concept, situation awareness recovery (SAR), and we identify perceptual and cognitive processes that characterize SAR.

Assess team performance within a networked supervisory control setting while manipulating automated decision aids and monitoring team communication and working memory ability.

Last evening, we had the privilege of hosting the GMU Human Factors Students for some refreshments, a tour of our facility, and an engaging discussion about all things User Experience.

Christian Gonzalez, a HFAC PhD student and Dr. Rob Youmans win $30,000 for their design, DATA WORKS. The National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) challenge was to develop an interactive data visualization application for the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts dataset.

Psychology alumnus Ricardo Prada leads the user experience team at Google X, Google’s semi-covert laboratory where it develops products from the innovative to the truly far-out. In an interview with the online industrial design magazine Core77, he discusses Google X’s process for hiring designers.

"Physical exercise, nutritious diet, meditation and cognitive stimulation can enhance mental function in older adults as these activities have a positive effect on brain," opined professor Raja Parasuraman from George Mason University, Virginia, USA while speaking at the International Conference on Recent Advances in Cognition and Health.

People with a variant of a gene that controls dopamine levels are better at multitasking, scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have found. "Dopamine availability in the PFC appears to be particularly important when task demands are high," researcher Raja Parasuraman from George Mason University and colleagues said.

Self-motivated visual scanning predicts flexible navigation in a virtual environment.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

The 2nd Annual Virginia Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Student Conference was hosted at George Mason University this past weekend.

CENTEC investigators identify gene influencing training in controlling unmanned vehicles

Dr. Raja Parasuraman, a leading expert in automation, with his long-standing research in human performance in human-machine systems, is quoted in an article in "The Atlantic" discussing the concerns behind our trust in automation.

Robert Youmans, assistant professor of psychology, put together a team of students from the Department of Psychology, the college's bachelor of individualized study program, Mason's School of Art, and the Department of Computer Science, to design an app geared towards making flying more enjoyable.

The Center of Excellence in Neuroergonomics, Technology, and Cognition (CENTEC) and Colin Dueck, associate professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs, won the 16th annual Award for Scholarship.

Practicing a little Zen before class can lead to better grades, according to a new experimental study by George Mason University professor Robert Youmans and University of Illinois doctoral student Jared Ramsburg.

Exercising, eating a healthy diet and playing brain games may help you keep your wits about you well into your 80s and even 90s, advises a new book by Mason researchers.

Developed by Dr. Peterson, Daniel Gartenberg, and Nick Penaranda, in conjunction with the NVESD, ROC-V Mobile is an app used by the Army to train soldiers to recognize combat vehicles. ROC-V Mobile has been praised for it's ease-of-use, which says a lot about our Human Factors students and faculty that helped develop this app.

Daniel Gartenberg, a HFAC Ph.D. student developed the Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock app. A top 10 app in the 'Health and Fitness' category in numerous countries, featured on the Early Show, Network TV's Saturday Morning News, Sleep Review Magazine, Gizmodo's top 10 apps of the week, and Discoveries and BreakThroughs Inside Science.

The Provost has announced that Dr. Deborah Boehm-Davis will succeed Dr. Jack Censer as dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

Congratulations to CENTEC director, Dr. Raja Parasuraman, and the entire CENTEC team on receiving the College of Humanities and Social Sciences 16th Annual Award for Scholarship. "For the past 15 years, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences has highlighted and recognized faculty members for their consistent excellence in recent scholarship. This year however, for the first time in its history, CHSS is honoring an individual faculty member and an entire center." CENTEC will be recognized at the Celebration of Scholarship on Nov. 12, 2012.

Dr. Robert Youmans, Human Factors and Applied Cognition faculty, is committed to innovation in all areas of his research.

See CENTEC Scholar, Andre Garcia, discuss his summer internship working at the Human Performance Wing at Wright Paterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Read about Mr. Garcia's work on a project which is known as BATMAN (Battlefield Air Targeting Man-Aided kNowledge).

A new study by University Professor Raja Parasuraman shows that giving the brain a little jolt can accelerate learning and memory.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

Quantified Self and Science are not oil and water. They are intertwined with one another and have a long history together.

APS Lab Profile: George Mason University's Arch Lab.

Carryl Baldwin, faculty member in the Department of Psychology, is studying just how safe, effective and even how irritating auto warnings can be. She’s using a special driving simulator in Mason’s Arch Lab.

In their new book ”Nurturing the Older Brain and Mind”, Pamela Greenwood (Associate Professor, Psychology Department) and Raja Parasuraman (University Professor, Psychology Department) provide an scientific overview about what we know (and don’t know) about aging brains and minds.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

Air Force Scholar, Ryan McKendrick, receives 2nd Best Paper Award from Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making Technical Group

Raja Parasuraman has edited a special issue of the journal NeuroImage on the topic of Neuroegonomics.

CENTEC Air Force scholar, Brian Falcone, receives a Student Grant Award from the Augmented Cognition Technical Group of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Mr. Falcone received this grant for a proposal on the effects of transcranial Direct Current Brain Stimulation (tDCS) on cognitive performance.

Researchers in the Arch Lab at George Mason University in Virginia use temple-worn ultrasound probes to measure the electrical activity and blood flow in subjects' brains as they are exposed to general-purpose simulations of multiple unmanned system feeds.

George Mason University's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Program, housed in the psychology department, conducts cutting-edge research relevant to some of today's biggest safety issues. During the spring 2011 semester, the program took a creative detour.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society is holding a contest for a video describing what human factors/ergonomics is in a fun and informative fashion. George Mason University's Arch Lab, housed in the psychology department, entered the competition.

Honda’s Research and Development laboratories visited CENTEC on March 3, 2011

The Center of Excellence in Neuroergonomics, Technology, and Cognition's (CENTEC) research on the human brain helps the Air Force understand data overload in combat.

Five psychology doctoral students created a speedometer that informs drivers of safe speeds during hazardous conditions. The speedometer's safety features are based off of two years of studying drivers' habits. The projected was covered in the Washington Post.

A team of five psychology students at the university spent the past two years studying driving habits during inclement weather and created a speedometer that alerts drivers to appropriate speeds when traveling in snow, rain and other hazardous conditions.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

“The best thing is to have a consistent sleep-wake schedule,” Dan Gartenberg said, a graduate student studying psychology at Mason. Gartenberg said sleep deprivation has short-term effects such as increased blood pressure and desires for fatty foods, a weakened immune system, a harder time remembering things and a decrease in sense of humor.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

Dr. Raja Parasuraman received the Inaugural Raymond S. Nickerson Award for Best Paper in the 2009 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied with coauthors James Thompson and Tyler Shaw, as well as graduate students Ewart de Visser, Ellen Clarke, Ryan McGarry, and Liz Hussey.

Dr. Parasuraman's career is focused on mapping the limits of the human mind. With a better understanding of how we process information, the director of HFAC research at GMU hopes to improve the control mechanisms of vehicles, computer systems, and robots so that they can relate better with our own control hardware-our brain.

Recently honored with the “Outstanding Faculty Award” by the State Council for Higher Education (SCHEV), Dr. Raja Parasuraman is a nationally recognized leader in psychology and neuroscience, but he says his most gratifying work is in opening the door for other scholars.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

Seven Mason faculty members have been nominated for the 2009 State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) Outstanding Faculty Awards. Four of these are from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Parasuraman, R. and Rizzo, M. Neuroergonomics: The Brain at Work. New York: Oxford University Press. 2008.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

Professor Raja Parasuraman was recognized for his Distinguished Service by the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

Check out "The Archie", George Mason's Human Factors and Applied Cognition Newsletter.

Within the next 30 years, the number of residents 65 and older in this region will more than double. Currently, Psychology's Parasuraman is engaged in research that will help agencies deal with the health and social issues involving the aging population.

Professor Raja Parasuraman's article "Humans and Automation: Use, Misuse, Disuse, Abuse" chosen as a "pivotal article" for review in the 50th (Golden) Anniversary Special Issue of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society, 1997.