Professor Garcia Coll's areas of specialization include high risk populations, minority populations, socio-cultural influences on development, infant development, and interactions between mother and infant. Presently, her scholarship is largely focused on the role of race and ethnicity on children's development. Professor Garcia Coll has been specifically working on the role of culture, acculturation, and different sources of oppression (i.e., poverty, racism, and discrimination) in shaping human development. She is currently working in three main areas: completing her longitudinal study of children of immigrants, developing a new area of research on acculturation, and research on early sex differentiation.