Lisa W. Coyne, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Psychology; Associate Director of Graduate Curriculum; Director, Early Childhood Clinical Practicum
B.S., University of Scranton (Psychology/English/Philosophy), M.A., Ph.D., University of Mississippi
Internship: Brown Medical School
Postdoctoral Fellowship: NIMH-funded T-32 Research Fellowship in the Pediatric Psychology at Rhode Island Hospital/Brown Medical School at the Pediatric Anxiety Research Clinic (PARC)

Contact Information

Suffolk University
Department of Psychology
41 Temple Street
Boston, MA 02114
Donahue 636F
617-305-6363 (Office)
617-367-2924 (Fax)
lcoyne@suffolk.edu

 

Courses Taught

PSYCH 314 Learning and Reinforcement
PSYCH 350 Psychology Internship
PSYCH 746 Child Assessment
PSYCH 748 Developmental Psychopathology

Specialty Areas

Acceptance and mindfulness, parenting, early childhood psychopathology, cultural adaptations of evidence-based parenting interventions, child anxiety disorders

My research interests include two broad areas, both of which involve parenting in early childhood, and child socioemotional development.  I am interested in exploring acceptance and mindfulness processes, in particular, the role of experiential avoidance (EA) in parent-child interactions, and how this may contribute to the development of impaired parenting and child psychopathology.  Experiential avoidance may influence how parents manage their children’s behavior, how they model and coach emotion regulation strategies, and may well place them at risk of developing harsh, coercive, or psychologically controlling responses to their children’s emotions and behavior. As such, understanding parent EA will ultimately help us better describe and influence the development of child psychopathology. However, extant measures of EA are quite limited. Thus, I am interested in developing better ways of measuring this construct, as well as exploring the role of EA in how parents implement behavior management strategies and engage in emotion socialization with their young children.  At present, ECRC is conducting research in community samples of families with young children (aged 18 months to 6 years) whose parents are at risk for developing impaired parenting repertoires.  We are using this pilot work to guide the development of an early childhood mindfulness-based behavioral parent training program, to be tested in open trial in the Spring and Summer of 2010.  

I am also interested in reducing mental health disparities in minority groups.  As such, my work has focused on identifying obstacles to service utilization, access to care, and quality and culture-specific acceptability of evidence based treatments across minority and immigrant populations.  In particular, I am interested in disseminating evidence based psychosocial interventions to diverse families parents and young children in community settings.  To date, my research lab, the ECRC, has adapted an evidence-based behavioral parent management training program for use with Chinese immigrant families, and is currently running an open trial in Boston’s Chinatown.

Selected Publications

Silvia, K. & Coyne, L. W. Exploring the Effects of a Brief Mindfulness Analog on Parent-Child Interaction.  Under review.

Coyne, L. & Marks, A.K. (Forthcoming). Translational research in cultural context: Adapting an early childhood behavioral intervention for use in a Chinese American community. In R. Moreno & S. S. Chuang (Eds.), Immigrant Children. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Freeman, J. B. Garcia, A. M., & Coyne, L. W., Compton, S. & Leonard, H. L.  (2008). A family-based cognitive-behavioral treatment for early childhood OCD: Preliminary findings. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 47 (5), 593-602.

Coyne, L. W., Ehrenreich, J.T. & Cheron, D. Assessment of Acceptance and Mindfulness Processes in Youth (2008). In L. Greco (Ed.) Acceptance and Mindfulness Interventions for Children, Adolescents, and Families. Invited chapter.

Coyne, L. W., Miller, A. L., Low ,C., Seifer, R. & Dickstein, S. (2006). Mothers’ empathic understanding of their toddlers: Associations with maternal sensitivity and depression.  Journal of Child and Family Studies.
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