Current PIRT Fellows
Nik Allan
Nik is a 5th year PIRT fellow in Clinical Psychology. His research interests concern more accurately defining the construct of effortful control and its relation to emergent literacy in preschool children. He is also interested in the complex relation between ADHD-associated behavior problems and academic outcomes in young children including the effects of potential mediators and moderators on that relation.
Presentations:
Allan, N. P. & Lonigan, C. J. (2009). Relations between Behavior Problems and Emergent Literacy Skills. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Institute of Education Sciences, Washington, D.C.
Allan, N. P., Wilson, S. B., & Lonigan, C. J. (2009). Gender Differences: Sex Moderates the Relation between Externalizing Behavior and Emergent Literacy. Poster presented at the Sixteenth Annual Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Boston, MA.
Eric Christesen
Eric is a 3rd year PIRT fellow in Learning and Cognition. His research interests include teacher quality, how teachers handle student mistakes in the classroom, as well as how teachers affect students' motivations.
Publications:
Roehrig, A.D., & Christesen, E. (in press). Development and use of a tool for evaluating teacher effectiveness in grades K-12. In V. Shute & B. Becker (Eds.), Innovative assessment for the 21st century: Supporting educational needs. New York, NY: Springer.
Roehrig, A.D., & Turner, J.T., Arrastia, M., Christesen, E., McElhaney, S., & Jakiel, L. (under review). Effective Teachers and Teaching: Characteristics and Practices Related to Student Outcomes. In T. Urdan, S. Graham, M. Royer, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), APA Educational Psychology Handbook Volume 2: Individual differences, cultural considerations, and contextual factors in educational psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
John Marc Goodrich
John is interested in the development of reading skills and the development of reading curricula for English language learning children, particularly native Spanish speakers.
Shawn Kent
Shawn is a 3rd year PIRT Fellow in the Special Education program. Current research interests include exploring variables impacting the fidelity of delivery of core reading instruction and reading interventions, as well as implications of a tiered-model of reading support (Response to Intevention) with students in later elementary and secondary grades. Shawn is also interested in written expression, namely, what factors may uniquely contribute to the developmental course of writing difficulties. He has just begun working with Dr. Jeanne Wanzek on a Reading for Understanding grant aimed at developing and testing interventions for students with comprehension difficulties in grades 7 through 12.
Presentations:
Kent, S.C. & Wanzek, J. (2011). Amount and type of engagement with print for kindergarten students at-risk for developing reading difficulties. Poster presented at the Pacific Coast Research Conference, Coronado, CA.
Publications:
Wanzek, J. & Kent, S.C. (in press). Reading interventions for students with learning disabilities in the upper elementary grades. Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal.
Rebecca Mazzullo
Rebecca is a fourth year PIRT fellow in the Clinical Psychology program. Rebecca's broad research interests include the relationship between childhood externalizing behavior problems and peer relationships, academic achievement, and educational outcomes.
Publications:
Ashare, R.L., Hawk Jr., L. W., Mazzullo, R. J. (2007). Motivated attention: Incentive effects on attentional modification of prepulse inhibition. Psychophysiology, 44, 839-845.
Shiels, K.,Hawk Jr., L.W., Reynolds, B., Mazzullo, R. J., Rhodes, J., Pelham Jr., W. E., Waxmonsky, J. G., and Gangloff, B. P. (2009). Effects of Methylphenidate on Discounting of Delayed Rewards in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 17 (5), 291-301.
Jamie Quinn
Jamie is a 3rd year PIRT fellow in Developmental Psychology. Her research interests concern advanced statistical modeling and methodological techniques including structural equation modeling, latent growth curve analysis, latent change score modeling, and item response theory. She is also interested in the relationship of predictors of reading comprehension such as phonological awareness, vocabulary, and decoding and their development over the span of preschool to adolescence.
Presentations:
Quinn, J. M., Wagner, R. K. (2011). Sex Differences in Dyslexia and the Accuracy of its Diagnosis. Paper presented at the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, St Petersburg, FL.
Quinn, J. M., Wagner, R. K., Petscher, Y. (2012). Dual Change Score Modeling of Developmental Relationships Between Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension. Poster presented at the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Montreal, Quebec, CA.
Publications:
Quinn, J. M., Wagner, R. K. (in preparation) Gender Differences in Reading Impairment and in the Identification of Impaired Readers: Results from a Large-Scale Study of At-Risk Readers.
Quinn, J. M., Wagner, R. K., Petscher, Y. (in preparation). Dual Change Score Modeling of Developmental Relationships Between Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension.
Anabelle Andon
Anabelle is in her 3rd and final year as a PIRT Fellow. She recently completed her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies with an emphasis in International Development Education. Anabelle is interested on issues of teacher training, bilingual education, and the quality of education provided to disadvantaged populations such as rural, poor, immigrant, and indigenous populations both in the United States as well as in Latin America. She has worked on the Principal PROMiSE Professional Development Study as well as the Mathematics (K-3) Formative Assessment Project under the tutelage of Dr. Laura B. Lang. Her dissertation focused on the mathematics and reading achievement of immigrant fourth graders across various countries.
Presentations:
Reta Sánchez, A., Petscher, Y., & Lang, L. B. (2011, July). Examining the growth of reading for migrant students in Florida. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, St. Petersburg Beach, FL
Reta Sánchez, A., Luschei, T., & Lang, L. B. (2011, May). Immigrant Students' Mathematics and Science achievement Cross-nationally: An Analysis of Fourth Graders. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, Montreal, Canada
Rew, W. J., Reta Sánchez, A., Luschei, T., & Lang, L. B. (2011, May). Examining the prevalence and characteristics of teacher moonlighting: Cross-national evidence from TALIS. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, Montreal, Canada
Reta Sánchez, A., Sakon, F., & Lang, L. B. (2010, November). Differential Item Functioning for Minority Principals on a Math Content Knowledge Test. Poster presented at the 55th Annual Florida Educational Research Association, Orlando, FL
Reta Sánchez, A., & Lang, L. B. (2010, June). Elementary School Principals Mathematics Content Knowledge and Demographic Data: Insight into Professional Development Efforts. Poster presented at the Fifth Annual Research Conference of the Institute of Education Sciences, National Harbor, MD
Reta, A. (2010, March). Quality of education for indigenous children in Mexico and Ecuador: Comparative analysis of teacher training. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, Chicago, IL
Reta, A. & Luschei, T. (2009, March). New York City's conditional cash transfer program and its basis on Mexico's Oportunidades. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, Charleston, SC
Reta, A. (2009, April). Quality of teachers in rural Mexico: Recruitment, training and retention of teachers. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Latin American Scholars, New York, NY
Publications:
Lang, L .B., Hawthorne, H., Sakon, F., Reta, A., & Schoen, R. (2011). Examining the Effects of a K-3 Mathematics Formative Assessment System. The eleventh bi-annual conference on Elementary Mathematics Teaching, SEMT '11 Conference Proceedings.
Andon, A., Rew, W. J., Luschei, T. F., & Lang, L. B. (in progress). Teacher and school correlates of moonlighting: A multilevel study of teachers in Mexico.
Andon, A., Thompson, C. G., & Becker, B. J. (in progress). A Meta-analysis of the Immigrant Achievement Gap Across OECD Countries.
Andon, A., Rew, W. J., Luschei, T., Lang, L. B., & Ramos-Mattoussi, F. (in progress). Teacher moonlighting in Brazil: A multilevel study.
Mercedes Spencer
Mercedes is a 3rd year PIRT fellow in the Developmental Psychology program. She will be working with both Dr. Rick Wagner and Dr. Carol Connor. Her primary research interests are in children's learning, specifically reading comprehension and linguistic acquisition.
Presentations:
Wagner, R., Spencer, M., Tighe, E., Muse, A., Foorman, B., Schatschneider, C., & Petscher, Y. (2011). Dimensionality of morphological awareness. Paper presented at the 18th annual Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR) Conference in St. Pete Beach, FL.
Spencer, M. (2012). Investigating the factor structure of vocabulary knowledge. Poster presented at the 19th annual Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR) Conference in Montreal, Canada.
Wagner, R., Spencer, M., & Tighe, E. (2012). A causal-indicator model of the role of morphology in reading comprehension. Paper presented at the 19th annual Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR) Conference in Montreal, Canada.
Michael Mayer
Michael Mayer is a 3rd year PIRT fellow in Developmental Psychology. His primary interests center on word- , sentence- , and individual-level factors that influence language processing. More specifically, his research focuses on how these factors influence sentence processing across various syntactic structures, and the relation between syntactic parsing skills and comprehension ability. Recently, he has started to delve into research related to the role of the motor system to language processing.
Publications:
Mayer, M.B., Vorstius, C., Radach, R., & Günther, T. (2011). Reading development: comparing silent, oral and 'mindless' reading. Poster presented at the biennial European Conference on Eye Movements, Marseille, FR.
Mayer, M.B., Kaschak, M.P. (2012). Individual differences in the processing of ambiguous sentences. Poster presented at the Nineteenth Annual Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Montreal, CA.
Heather Pilcher
Heather Pilcher is a first year PIRT fellow in the Reading and Language Arts Education Ph.D. program. Her research intrests include reading fluency development and the relationships between reading and writing skill development. She will be working with Dr. Young-Suk Kim to examine reading fluency development in the early elementary grades.
Haley Stephens
Haley is a 4th year PIRT fellow in Clinical Psychology. Haley's research interests include examining how children's self-perceived social and scholastic competence affects their overall academic achievement.
Elizabeth Tighe
Elizibeth is a 3rd year PIRT fellow in Cognitive Psychology. Her research interests include the development of phonological, morphological, and orthographic skills and their relationship to reading comprehension in elementary school children and children with reading disabilities.
Publications:
Binder, K.S., Tighe, E., Jiang, Y., Kaftanski K., Qi, C., & Ardoin, S.P. (in press). Reading expressively and understanding thoroughly: An examination of prosody in adults with low literacy. Reading and Writing.
Leigh McLean
Leigh is a doctoral student and PIRT fellow studying Developmental Psychology at FSU. She is originally from Oregon and earned her Bachelor's degree in Human Development and Family Sciences from Oregon State University, where she worked with preschool children studying ethnicity and self-regulation. Here at FSU, her research interests include teacher characteristics and their affects on student outcomes, with a specific focus on depression in early elementary teachers and it's affects on young students' self regulation and reading development. She also examines instruction techniques in early education classrooms and their relative effectiveness for specific groups of students, such as those with significant problem behaviors. Leigh works with Dr. Carol Connor and is currently in the second year of her doctoral program.
Sarah Ingebrand
I'm a 2nd year PIRT fellow working with Dr. Connor. I am interested in researching typical and atypical development, specifically looking at learning disabled populations and early intervention.
Meagan Caridad Arrastia-Lloyd
Meagan Caridad Arrastia-Lloyd is a doctoral student in Learning and Cognition in the College of Education. She studies effective teaching with her advisor Dr. Alysia D. Roehrig and professional development for teachers with Dr. Laura Lang. Currently, her interests include professional development for reading instruction in the content areas, as well as formative assessment in mathematics.
Presentations:
Roehrig, A. D., Turner, J. E., Arrastia, M. C., Christensen, E., McElhaney, S., & Jakiel, L. (2011). Effective teachers and teaching: Characteristics and practices related to positive student outcomes. In K. R. Harris, S. Graham, T. Urdan, S. Graham, J. M. Royer, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), APA educational psychology handbook: Vol. 2. Individual differences and cultural and contextual factors (pp. 501-527). doi: 10.1037/13274-020
Darabi, A. A., Arrastia, M. C., Nelson, D. W., Cornille, T., & Liang, X. (2011). Cognitive presence in online discussion: A comparison of four discussion strategies. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27(3). ISI Thompson Impact Factor 1.313.
Ford, J. A., & Arrastia, M. C. (2008). Pill-poppers and dopers: A comparison between non-medical prescription drug use and street drug use among college students. Addictive Behaviors, 33(7), 934-941. ISI Thompson Impact Factor 1.846.
Brandy Gatlin
Brandy is a second year PIRT fellow pursuing her Ph.D. in Special Education. Brandy's research interests include early literacy intervention and cultural and linguistic diversity in special education. She is also interested in the areas of Response to Intervention, specifically culturally responsive intervention, individualized instruction, and the prevention of learning disabilities. She is currently working under the supervision of Dr. Jeanne Wanzek as project co-coordinator on a Multidisciplinary Learning Disabilities Center project.
Presentations:
Gatlin, B., Wanzek, J., Al Otaiba, S. & Folsom, J. (2012, July). An analysis of early oral language abilities of African American students. Poster presented at the Nineteenth Annual Society for the Scientific Study of Reading Conference, Montreal, QE.
Publications:
Gatlin, B., Wanzek, J., Al Otaiba, S. (in progress). An analysis of early oral language differences by race and socioeconomic status.
Pam Burris
Pam is a 2nd year PIRT Fellow in Learning and Cognition. Her research interests include early literacy and language development among children from low socioeconomic status environments and interventional strategies to aid the development of these skills. She will be working with Dr. Beth Phillips.
Adrienne Barnes
Adrienne E. Barnes is a second-year PIRT fellow. She is currently working toward a Ph.D. in the Reading and Language Arts Education program. Adrienne also holds a Master's degree in Reading and Language Arts and a Baccalaureate in Elementary Education, both from FSU-PCC. She is currently working Dr. Young-Suk Kim to examine reading and listening comprehension skill development in elementary-aged children. Research interests include early oral language development, correlations between language phenomena and comprehension, eye movements during reading, and brain activation patterns.
Presentations:
Barnes, A. E., Kim, Y-S, & Phillips, B. (2012, July). Young Children's Narratives: The Use of Story Structure and Linguistic Devices in Story Retell and Story Production by Children in Low SES Environments. Poster at the joint conferences of The Society for Text and Discourse and The Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Montreal, Canada.
