Originally published: . Volume 5, No. 9. Source pages: 1, 11.
Chair of the Louisiana State University (LSU) Psychology Department and founder of the cognitive psychology program, Dr. Robert Mathews, will retire at the end of this month. After receiving his doctorate in psychology from Yale University in 1976, he came to Baton Rouge as a young Assistant Professor and made his home for nearly 40 years, with contributions in academics, research, and university administration.
Mathews has led the department through one of the toughest financial periods in the last decades, and yet has been able to build a dynamic group of scientists and educators, and a department that has grown in national prestige and focus.
“As chair, I am pleased that I have been able to retain our great faculty and hire more during the worst of financial times at LSU,” he told the Times last week.
“… I worked to get the department in tune with trends in the field by moving into more physiological measures and neuroscience in their research. We hired two researchers, Melissa Beck and Megan Papesh who use physiological measures in their research. We also hired a neuro-clinical psychologist, Matthew Calamia, to replace the expertise we lost with Drew Gouvier's retirement.”
During Mathews’ tenure as chair the number of faculty members obtaining grants to support their research greatly increased, he explained, a critical effort in austere times.
But maintaining this course has not always been easy. Mathews explained the challenges of holding together a quality psychology program during financially rough periods. “We have too few faculty members for our 600 plus undergraduate student majors and our PhD programs,” he said. “We have done our best to make our unavoidable large classes engaging and offer personal attention to our students. However, we should be a faculty of about 35, instead of 21.” He also noted the last of resources for graduate students.
But Mathews’ career has also been full of rewarding experiences. Mathews views one his greatest accomplishments to be the founding of the cognitive PhD program in 1986 and making it a success.
“I have had a hand in hiring all of our outstanding faculty in the cognitive area,” Mathews told the Times, “first as area head and later as chair. This area is thriving and nationally prominent,” he said, “especially in learning, attention, memory and perception research.”
He sees a second most important contribution to be his founding of the Office of Applied Cognition, called the OAC, with co-director, Dr. Sean Lane.
“This office is dedicated to applying cognitive science to solve real world problems,” said Mathews. “The work has included research on teaching highway workers basic math through an innovative online training program, helping math teachers improve their expertise by using deliberate practice, and studying the impact of rolling out new technology in a hospital.”
Dr. Mathews plans on continuing to serve as co-director of the OAC in retirement, and is looking forward to “… more projects that benefit both science and the community,” he said.
Mathews has taught both graduate students and undergraduates, he has been awarded numerous research grants, including several from the Army Research Institute for work in implicit and explicit learning, from the National Science Foundation for physicians’ adoption of technology, and from the Louisiana Board of Regents for cognitive science.
He has numerous publications including a chapter currently in press, titled, “Implicit and explicit processes in the development of mental skills: A theoretical interpretation with some practical implications for science instruction,” to be part of the edited volume, To think and act like a scientist: The roles of inquiry, research and technology. Mathews has published a long list of scholarly contributions, such as, “The interaction of implicit learning, explicit hypothesis testing learning, and implicit-to-explicit knowledge extraction,” in Neural Networks.
So, when the Times asked him, “What has been most rewarding?” his answer was not surprising. “My research on implicit learning over practically my whole career has been very rewarding. The role of non- conscious cognition in everyday thinking is huge and previously ignored.” He is also excited by his work on cognitive bias in decision-making. “We have found a way to create a confirmation bias––false belief–– in the lab and are studying the cognitive mechanisms that maintain the belief––for example, attending more to confirming evidence––to develop methods to help eliminate bias in real world situations.”
“We do have two minds,” Mathews’ said to the Times in a previous interview, referring to two mental systems what operate by different rules. “Not only does implicit learning exist,” he said, “but it may be the primary way we learn.”
One important track of his investigations, funded by the Army Research Institute, has been medical decision errors. An estimated 44,000 people die each year in hospitals, from preventable errors in decision-making of medical professionals. “The good news,” Mathews said, “is that they [medical professionals] often choose effective treatments. The bad news is that they are generally unaware of bad side effects and often unconsciously merge side effects with their judgments about the efficacy of treatments on the main output variable,” he explained.
“They also too often prescribe ineffective treatments and believe individual differences exist when there are none,” he said. “We have only scratched the surface in this research.”
Dr. Mathews contributions to the both the university and the department have been significant. He has served as the Chairman of the Institutional Review Board for LSU for the last 14 years. And, he has been the Human Subjects Administrator for the last 11 years. In this role, Mathews has been responsible for the safety of all human subjects at LSU, including the critical research after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
He developed the on-line course to teach psychology majors about careers in psychology, solving a decades long problem for undergraduates who left universities without a clear job path or plan. Mathews worked with Dr. Paul Atchley from the University of Kansas, LSU colleagues Drs. Sean Lane, Emily Elliott, and his graduate student Jon Tall to develop the course which is now required for all psychology majors.
“It teaches them about the wide variety of career paths for psychology majors and helps them choose their courses,” said Mathews. “It also helps them find opportunities to enhance their competitiveness both within and outside the department,” he said.
What has Dr. Mathews enjoyed the most? “I have enjoyed most as chair was working with so many excellent, dedicated members of my administrative team. Most notably, Sean Lane, Emily Elliott, and Jason Hicks contributed every day to making our department a success. In addition, Mike Hawkins, Drew Gouvier, and Tom Davis have made great contributions. All of our faculty members have contributed much during these 6 years as chair.”
The low point? “I regret the demise of our I/O [Industrial-Organizational] PhD program in recent years,” he said. “We simply did not have the resources to meet their growth needs, so they left the department. There is talk at the college level of rekindling this program. This would be wonderful but would require a great financial commitment by the college.”
What are his plans now? Dr. Mathews looks forward to continuing some of his research with a small number of students, and “… no administrative or teaching responsibilities, it is exciting to just focus on doing valuable research.”
“In retirement I will also resume an old hobby—throwing pots, and begin a new one- -growing orchids,” he said.
Since daughter Eva and her family will be moving back to the area from Boston this summer, he added, “Most importantly, I will get to help raise my two-year old grandchild.”
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.