Joseph Magliano (psychologist)

Joseph P. Magliano is an American cognitive psychologist and professor of educational psychology in the Department of Learning Sciences at Georgia State University. He is a nationally recognized leading researcher in narrative comprehension, event cognition, and the processing of visual media. Magliano is best known for co-developing the Scene Perception and Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT), a major theoretical framework that explains how people construct coherent mental models from film, comics, picture stories, and other visual narratives. His research bridges cognitive psychology and education, with practical applications in reading assessment, postsecondary literacy support, and media comprehension. His publications have been cited more than 13,000 times.