Lisa W. Coyne, PhD

Associate Professor
Department of Psychology 

Phone: 617.305.6363
Fax: 617.367.2924
Email: lcoyne@suffolk.edu
Office: Donahue Building, Rm. 636F

*Note that Dr. Coyne will not be admitting a doctoral student for Fall 2012.

Education

• PhD, University of Mississippi
• MA, University of Mississippi
• BS, University of Scranton

Internship: Warren Alpert Medical School; Postdoctoral Fellowship: Rhode Island Hospital/Warren Alpert Medical School at the Pediatric Anxiety Research Clinic (PARC), Specialty in Pediatric Psychology; Licensed Clinical Psychologist, MA.

Specialty Areas

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

I am interested in acceptance and mindfulness-based processes in young children and their parents. Thus, my research has focused on emotion regulation and related socioemotional characteristics in early childhood, as well as adaptations of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to young children and their parents. 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. We have a number of ongoing studies in our lab, including both correlational and experimental work in this area. 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 2011.

A more recent interest that has arisen from our clinical and consultative work in the Early Childhood Research Clinic involves dissemination of evidence-based early childhood mental health treatments in high-risk, diverse, urban populations. I am committed to reducing mental health disparities in minority groups through research and how research may and should influence social policy. 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. 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

Shea, S. & Coyne, L.W. (In press). Maternal dysphoric mood, stress and parenting practices in mothers of preschoolers: the role of experiential avoidance. Journal of Child and Family Behavior Therapy.

Marks, A. K., Patton, F., & Coyne, L. W. (In press). Acculturation-related conflict across generations in immigrant families. In R. Moreno & S. S. Chuan (Eds.) Immigrant Children. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Coyne, L. W & Murrell, A. M. (2009) The Joy of Parenting: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Guide to Parenting in the Early Years. California: New Harbinger.

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., 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.

Courses Taught

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