Amy Kerivan Marks, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Psychology
B.A., Cornell University (Biology & Society), Ph.D., Brown University (Developmental & Experimental Psychology).

Specialty Areas

Developmental Psychology - Cultural & community contexts; ethnic identity & acculturation; academic & social development; mixed methodology & data modeling.

My research aims to better understand the ways in which cultural, community, school, and social settings promote or inhibit a variety of developmental processes in childhood and adolescence.  By studying development in context, my colleagues and I hope to learn more about biological and ecological processes of development, while providing research findings that can advance intervention and policy efforts.  This work typically takes a positive youth development perspective, as well as an interest in the unique characteristics of settings that increase risk for poor health and education outcomes among ethnic and racial minority youth.  Recent studies have looked at:
• Characteristics of immigration processes, schools & families that promote academic achievement and early ethnic identity development among children of immigrant families
• Relations among ethnic identity characteristics (e.g., pride in ethnicity) and ethnic ingroup/outgroup social preferences (and biases) in middle childhood
• Psychological (e.g., attitudes toward learning) and demographic correlates of growth in mathematics and reading cognitive skills, among American Indian and Alaska Native children during the first four years of school
• Individual differences in affective regulation, school attitudes, and implicit measures of ethnic identities, related to “being bicultural” in adolescence

In addition, a new study of two national datasets (NELS and AddHealth) is currently underway to document characteristics of settings that support the “immigrant paradox” - a population phenomenon in which more highly acculturated youth have worse behavioral and education outcomes than recently immigrated peers.  Inspired by the complexity of these topics, I take a “mixed methods” approach to my research (e.g., combining correlational, qualitative, experimental, and data modeling studies), and draw from several ecological and minority youth development theoretical frameworks.  

Selected Publications

Marks, A. K., Patton, F., & García Coll, C. (Forthcoming). Ethnic and racial identities among second-generation adolescents. In R. Moreno & S. S. Chuang (Eds.), Immigrant Children: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Marks, A. K., Szalacha, L. S., Lamarre, M. Boyd, M. J., & García Coll, C. (In Press). Emerging ethnic identity and interethnic group social preferences in middle childhood:  Findings from the Children of Immigrants, Development in Context (CIDC) study. International Journal of Behavioral Development.

Marks, A. K., & García Coll, C. (2007). Psychological and demographic correlates of early academic skill development among American Indian and Alaska Native youth: A growth modeling study. Developmental Psychology, 43(3), 663-674.

Szalacha, L. S., Marks, A. K., Lamarre, M., & García Coll, C. (2005). Academic pathways and children of immigrant families. Research in Human Development, 2(4), 179-211.