Cognitive Program

Core Information

Program Overview

The Cognitive Program at the University of Pittsburgh offers research and training leading to a PhD in psychology, preparing students for jobs in academic and nonacademic settings. Our faculty and students have a strong interdisciplinary and collaborative perspective. Almost all faculty have joint grants and publications, affiliations with other departments and research centers, and expertise in multiple research methodologies. This interdisciplinary focus keeps the program at the cutting edge of psychological research.

Many of our faculty and students have a keen interest in bridging basic and applied research by understanding and applying cognitive principles to complex real world problems. In turn, they can use the insights gained to inform theories of cognition.

Our program's faculty serve as editors of major journals, receive national and international awards, and bring in millions of dollars of research funding every year. Such contributions are fundamental to maintaining the University of Pittsburgh's outstanding reputation for psychological research.

Research Areas of our Primary Faculty

Cognitive Neuroscience

Faculty: Coutanche, Fiez, Perfetti, Schneider, Tokowicz

Many of our cognitive faculty and students participate in the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), which brings together Pitt and Carneige Mellon University researchers working at the interface between cognition and neuroscience, including labs in psychology, neuroscience, neurobiology, biology, computer science, statistics, mathematics, bioengineering and robotics. Graduate students can participate in the CNBC joint training and certificate program. 

Our cognitive neuroscience labs use methods that include MRI, fMRI, EEG, eye-tracking, intracranial electrodes, neuropsychological patients, and more. Some of our faculty are closely involved with the running of the joint Pitt and CMU BRain Imaging Data Generation and Education (BRIDGE) Center, which allows us to scan fMRI participants in a cutting-edge facility mere blocks from our labs.

Language, Reading and Text Instruction

Faculty: Fraundorf, Perfetti, Tokowicz, Warren

The cognitive program has a rich tradition of research into language and reading. Topics studied in this area include: word processing, word learning (in both native and second languages), reading, effects of writing systems on reading, sentence processing (in both native and second languages, and in individuals with aphasia), syntactic adaptation, prosody, disfluencies, text comprehension, second language learning, and bilingual processing. Some of the methods used in this research include: ERPs, eye tracking, fMRI, MEG, behavioral experiments, and surveys.

This language and reading research forms the core of a broad web of language research at Pitt. Bi-weekly Reading and Language Group meetings bring together students and faculty from the cognitive program who are interested in language, to hear about on-going research projects; these meetings are also often attended by researchers from the School of Education, LRDC, CNBC, Communication Science and Disorders department and Linguistics department. Our students and faculty routinely collaborate with researchers from these other divisions and departments, broadening the range of questions asked and expertise available. Because the cognitive program is housed in the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC), which has a focus on education, we also have a strong tradition of work investigating applied questions in reading, reading instruction, and second language learning.

Higher-level Cognition, Instruction, and Complex Learning

Faculty: Coutanche, Fraundorf, Libertus, Nokes-Malach, Rottman,  Schunn

Building on our program's strong connection with the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC), many faculty and students explore aspects of higher-level cognition and its interaction with instruction and learning. Topics studied in include executive function, analogy, creativity, problem solving, decision making, causal reasoning, spatial reasoning, transfer, and categorization, with bridges into social cognitive processes (e.g., creativity and problem solving in groups), motivation, metacognition, and the development of higher-level cognition. This research often connects to complex real-world settings, like classrooms, engineering design, scientific discovery, mathematical problem solving, and medical decision making. Although much of the research uses psychology lab techniques for experimental rigor, some involves studying experts and novices working in real world settings on real world tasks. Relevant methods include eye-tracking, gesture analysis, and verbal protocol analysis.

Science often benefits from explorations of applications of theoretical knowledge. The cognitive program at the University of Pittsburgh has a strong connection to education and instruction. This educational research ranges from very basic examinations of the psychological mechanisms underlying learning to very applied research that builds interventions heavily guided by cognitive psychology theories (e.g., design of intelligent tutoring and peer teaching systems).

More Detailed Research Areas of our Primary and Secondary Faculty

Connections and Resources