People
Director
Robert C. Mathews
Professor
Department of Psychology,
Louisiana State UniversityPhone: (225) 578 - 4114
Vita:
Dr. Mathews is a Professor of Psychology, head of the Ph.D. Program in Cognition and Development, and Co-Director of the Office of Applied Cognition. He received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1976 and has been a teacher/researcher at LSU ever since.
As I look back on a 30 year career of research, I see two themes in my work. One theme is how the hidden forces within the human mind control our behavior. The second theme is that basic research findings should not only be useful, but actually be used. My early work focused on the way the mind automatically links information. One surprising finding was that contrasts (noticing specific differences between items) formed almost as good a mental glue for memory retrieval as did finding similarities. Much later, I realized that forgetting is actually the mind's way of abstracting knowledge. This memory driven learning has been the central concept in my work on implicit learning. On the practical side, my current research focuses on how nonconscious, memory driven processes work together (or sometimes against) with our conscious model-based processing. The Army Research Institute has sponsored this work in conjunction with Ron Sun at RPI to discover the optimal way to combine experiential (learning by doing) and reflective (model based) training. My work on the Cognitive toolbox project reflects a broader attempt to apply findings of cognitive science to help people become better thinkers (make better decisions or solve problems better). This work has led to my newest project, in conjunction with Sean Lane and Amy Copeland, to develop a self-control toolbox designed to allow people to have maximum control over their own behavior to allow them to pursue life changes in their chosen directions (e.g., eat healthier or quit smoking). This research is designed to enlighten the conscious mind about the hidden (but not “evil” in the Freudian sense) processes driving one’s behavior so that we can better control ourselves.
Office of Applied Cognition
Department of Psychology
Louisiana State University
210 Audubon Hall
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
