Kelly Cartwright

Kelly B. Cartwright is the inaugural Spangler Distinguished Professor of Early Child Literacy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she directs the READ Lab (Reading, Executive function, And Development Lab); serves as Co-Coordinator for the Ph.D. concentration in Literacy Research, Policy, and Practice; serves on the Executive Committee for the Mebane Early Literacy Center; and serves as Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Psychological Science.

Formerly Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Teacher Preparation at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, Cartwright is the recipient of numerous educational awards, including the 2025 Cato College of Education Research Excellence Award, and the 2023 State Council of Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award (the highest faculty award in the state of Virginia). Her research and service have taken her into preschools and elementary schools around the country for the better part of three decades. Her research, supported by grants from the US Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, explores neurocognitive and affective factors that underlie reading processes and difficulties across the lifespan. Cartwright is co-developer and co-author of the Active View of Reading, and her groundbreaking book, Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for Educators (now in second edition) is the first comprehensive text at this intersection. Cartwright has served on the Board of Directors of the Literacy Research Association and as Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She regularly works with educators around the world to understand and improve reading for striving students, and these experiences inform her research and service to the educational community.

Research Interests

Skilled reading requires that we manage many complicated processes all at once. Cartwright studies how readers actively manage reading’s complexity, such as ways that self-regulatory executive functions (EFs) undergird and manifest within reading processes in typical and striving readers and those who speak varied languages or dialects. Ongoing work examines mechanisms of EFs’ support of specific reading processes, as well as ways EFs facilitate coordination of the many reading processes necessary for skilled reading, both behaviorally and in the brain’s reading network,
using EEG scans. Additionally, she studies important influences of emotions (e.g., reading anxiety) and motivations, which can obstruct or facilitate reading processes and their development.

Teaching Interests

Elementary Reading Instruction
Child and Cognitive Development
Language and Literacy Development
Literacy Science and the Reading Brain

Education

Ph.D. Experimental Psychology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, 1997 (Emphases: Cognitive, Language, & Literacy Development; Neuroscience)
M.A. Psychology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, 1995
B.S. Psychology (minor: Biology), Virginia Tech, 1989

Selected Recent Publications

Cartwright, K. B., Taboada Barber, A., & Neal, E. (2026). Reading instruction: Executive function and self-regulation processes that promote differentiated literacy outcomes. In L. Meltzer & J. Dunstan, (Eds.), Executive function and emotional regulation in the classroom: Engaging students, mitigating stress, and promoting academic success. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Taboada Barber, A., Cartwright, K. B., Hancock, G. R., & Altani, A. (2026, in press). Reading anxiety and reading achievement: Disentangling the role of reading engagement in the late elementary grades. Journal of Educational Psychology

Ring, J., Phillips, N., & Cartwright, K. B. (2025). Validation of a computer-administered survey measure of graphophonological-semantic cognitive flexibility. Applied Neuropsychology: Adult. https://doi.org/10.1080/23279095.2025.2588283

Cartwright, K. B. & Palian, S. R. (2024). Considering roles of executive functions in the Science of Reading: A meta-analysis highlighting promises and challenges of reading-specific executive functions. Educational Psychologist https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2024.2418392

Peng, P., Liu, Y., Cartwright, K. B., Goodrich, M., Koziol, N., Ma, C., & Whitmarsh, C. (2024). The role of domain-general, behavioral, and reading-specific executive function in reading comprehension: Does context-specific executive function matter? Scientific Studies of Reading. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2024.2409635

Cartwright, K. B., Taboada Barber, A., Zumbrunn, S. K., & Duke, N. K. (2024). Self-regulation and executive function in language arts learning. In D. Fisher & D. Lapp (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (Chapter 15, pp. 312-332). NY: Routledge.

Barnes, Z., Fields, R. S., & Cartwright, K. B. (2024). A special educator’s guide to the science of reading. Preventing School Failure, 68(4), 310-317. https://doi.org/10.1080/1045988X.2023.2243847

Burns, M. K., Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2023). Evaluating components of the active view of reading as intervention targets: Implications for social justice. School Psychology, 38(1), 30-41. https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000519

Cartwright, K. B., Taboada Barber, A., & Archer, C. J. (2022). What’s the difference? Contributions of lexical ambiguity, reading comprehension, and executive functions to math word problem solving in linguistically diverse 3rd to 5th graders. Scientific Studies of Reading, 26(6), 565-584. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2022.2084399

Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the simple view of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56, S25-S44. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.411

Taboada Barber, A., Cartwright, K. B., Hancock, G. R., Klauda, S. L. (2021). Beyond the simple view of reading: The role of executive functions in emergent bilinguals’ and English monolinguals’ reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 56, S45-S64. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.385

Cartwright, K. B., Bock, A. M., Clause, J. H., Coppage August, E. A., Saunders, H. G., & Schmidt, K. J. (2020). Near- and far-transfer effects of an executive function intervention for 2 nd to 5 th grade struggling readers. Cognitive Development, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2020.100932

Cartwright, K. B., Marshall, T. R., & Hatfield, N. A. (2020). Concurrent and longitudinal contributions of a brief assessment of reading-specific executive function to reading comprehension in 1st and 2nd grade students. Mind, Brain, and Education,14, 114-123. https://doi.org/10.1111/mbe.12236

Cartwright, K. B., Lee, S. A., Taboada Barber, A., DeWyngaert, L. U., Lane, A. B., & Singleton, T. (2020). Contribution of executive function and intrinsic motivation to university students’ reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(3), 345-369. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.273

Selected Books

Barnes, Z. T. & Cartwright, K. B. (2026, in press). Executive skills in early childhood education: Developing self-regulation in young children. New York: Guilford Press.

Cartwright, K. B. (2023). Executive skills and reading comprehension: A guide for educators (2nd edition). New York: Guilford Press. (Fully updated and expanded to include work on dyslexia and the reading brain.)

Cartwright, K. B. (2015). Executive skills and reading comprehension: A guide for educators (1st edition). New York: Guilford Press. (This is the seminal book on the intersection of work in executive skills and reading.)