Dr Natasha Matthews is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Newcastle. Her research specializations encompass metacognition, particularly meta-attention and its connections to academic wellbeing, cognitive control, and strategy adjustment. Matthews examines cognitive development in children, focusing on private speech, self-regulation, and executive functioning. She investigates attention and perceptual decision-making, including the impacts of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, mild traumatic brain injury, and media-multitasking. Additional academic interests include mindfulness meditation for pain management, brain oscillations, and temporal order judgements and recalibration. As an affiliate of the Centre for Perception and Cognitive Neuroscience, she contributes to projects on metacognition, emotion regulation, high school transitions, and cognitive offloading in children.

Matthews has an extensive publication record, with works appearing in prestigious journals. Notable publications include 'Post-error slowing and individual differences in metacognition' (2026, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance), 'Maternal parenting style and self-regulatory private speech content use in preschool children' (2026, Journal of Child Language), 'The meta-attention knowledge questionnaire (MAKQ): a new instrument for investigating meta-attention in a young adolescent sample' (2025, Metacognition and Learning), 'Adolescent metacognitive ability predicts spontaneous task strategy adjustment' (2025, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance), 'Neurophysiology of perceptual decision-making and its alterations in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)' (2025, The Journal of Neuroscience), 'On the lasting impact of mild traumatic brain injury on working memory: Behavioural and electrophysiological evidence' (2024, Neuropsychologia), 'Media-multitasking and cognitive control across the lifespan' (2022, Scientific Reports), and 'Change in brain oscillations as a mechanism of mindfulness-meditation, cognitive therapy, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for chronic low back pain' (2021, Pain Medicine). She collaborates frequently with Paul E. Dux, Annemaree Carroll, Jason B. Mattingley, Amaya J. Fox, Kali Chidley, and Aisling Mulvihill. Matthews supervises higher degree by research students and maintains an active profile with 37 journal articles, 3 conference papers, and 5 data collections.

Professional Email: n.matthews1@uq.edu.au