Charles Perfetti

Charles Perfetti is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh's Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences, where he directs the Reading and Language Laboratories. His research examines cognitive and neural foundations of reading across languages, with emphasis on word identification, comprehension, bilingual processing, and neural accommodation to writing systems.

His primary research investigates reading comprehension through integrated lexical quality frameworks, neural mechanisms of language processing (using fMRI and ERP), cross-linguistic comparisons of reading acquisition, and second language learning. Recent work explores Chinese-English bilingual processing, neural correlates of text integration, and universal characteristics of reading systems.

Publications over the past 15 years demonstrate consistent themes: cognitive architecture of reading, neural plasticity in literacy development, bilingual lexical representation, and methodological innovations in measuring reading processes. Strong emphasis on writing system variation characterizes his comparative research program.

• Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (2004)
• Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award (2000)
• Elected to FABBS 'In Honor Of' Program (2017)
• Distinguished Scholar Award, AERA Research in Reading and Literacy SIG (2017)

He currently advises graduate students Geoffrey Lizar and Weiqi Wang, and leads NSF-funded projects on reading across writing systems. As Director of the Learning Research & Development Center, he oversees collaborative projects integrating cognitive science with educational applications.