Marc Goodrich, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders

Marc Goodrich received his doctorate in 2015 in developmental psychology from Florida State University. His primary area of research interest is the development and cross-language relations of academic skills among young language-minority (LM) children, particularly Spanish-speaking children in the U.S. He has published studies evaluating the efficacy of interventions designed to improve LM children’s early language and literacy skills, examining whether children can transfer knowledge and skills from their first language to their second language, and determining what other factors play a role in the development of LM children’s language and literacy skills (e.g., home language/literacy environment, executive function). The ultimate goal of this research is to further understanding of early language and literacy development among LM children and develop effective interventions that can begin to close the existing achievement gap between LM and monolingual children.

Recently, Goodrich has developed a greater interest in studying language development among LM children. This is an area of particular importance, as LM children typically have lower language skills than their monolingual peers. He is currently working on a proposal to use cutting-edge eye-tracking technology to develop a measure of automatic language processing for use with LM children. He plans to examine whether children’s language processing skills are related to traditional academic outcomes (e.g., reading comprehension) and potentially develop innovative vocabulary instruction that is targeted towards improving children’s automatic language processing. Goodrich is currently working on a number of studies examining the growth trajectories of children’s first and second language vocabulary knowledge beginning in preschool, as well as identifying predictors of rates of growth of vocabulary knowledge in children’s first and second languages.