Charles Perfetti

Charles Perfetti is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, where he advanced the understanding of reading and language processes over a nearly six-decade career. Joining the university in 1967 as an assistant professor of psychology and research scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC), he ascended to professor of psychology and linguistics, chaired the Department of Psychology from 1992 to 1998, served as director of the LRDC from 2008 to 2024, and retired on January 31, 2026, after 58 years of service. Perfetti obtained his PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1967 and B.S. with honors in Psychology from the University of Illinois in 1962. He also held visiting positions at institutions including the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, University of Sussex, and University of Auckland.

Perfetti's research investigates cognitive and neural mechanisms of reading, from word identification and lexical quality to text comprehension and second language acquisition across writing systems like English and Chinese. Employing behavioral, ERP, fMRI, and MEG methodologies, his work introduced the Lexical Quality Hypothesis, emphasizing precise and robust lexical representations for comprehension. Major publications include the book Reading Ability (1985), edited volumes such as Learning to Read: Basic Research and Its Implications (1991) and Higher Level Language Processes in the Brain: Inference and Comprehension Processes (2007), and articles like "Word knowledge in a theory of reading comprehension" (2014) and "The neural bases of reading: Universals and writing system variations" (2010). With over 68,000 citations, his scholarship has profoundly influenced psycholinguistics and reading science. Awards encompass the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Awards from the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (2004) and Society for Text and Discourse (2014), Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award (2000), and Provost’s Award for Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring (2022). Perfetti mentored over 30 doctoral students and 25 postdocs and contributed editorially to journals including Journal of Memory and Language and Reading Research Quarterly.

Professional Email: perfetti@pitt.edu