The Next Generation of the Coercion Model: A Dynamic Systems Perspective on Parent Self-Regulation and Parent-Child Coregulation

Tom Dishion’s legacy is far-reaching and includes multiple key theoretical and empirical contributions to prevention science. One important contribution was in theoretical extensions and rigorous empirical tests of the coercion model. The coercion model (Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992) originated in research on children’s antisocial behavior, showing that parents and children were mutually shaped to engage in aversive behavior through operant and classical conditioning. Dishion’s work delved into the moment-to-moment nature of these interactions to better unpack how coercive processes acted as functional mechanisms for the development of antisocial behavior. He examined the patterning of coercive processes within and across time and context. He theorized about and tested how coercive interactions in the home were transferred into peer contexts to exacerbate antisocial tendencies. He developed interventions designed to reduce coercive family processes, which have shown ample success and large-scale dissemination. I will first review these significant contributions, which laid the groundwork for the next generation of scientists, offering tools and guidelines with respect to theory, methodology, and intervention in the prevention of children’s problem behavior.

Second, I will illustrate the ways I am building on Dishion’s foundational work, namely through the application of dynamic systems theory and methods to better understand the parent self-regulation and parent-child coregulation processes that organize the coercive cycle. At its core, the coercive cycle hinges on a regulatory deficit in the parent: s/he does not maintain the disciplinary limit initially set, perhaps due to limitations in emotion regulation or delay of gratification (i.e., electing avoidance of an aversive situation rather than waiting for child compliance). The relinquishment of this goal reinforces the maladaptive dyadic pattern, much like control parameters at one level serve to constrain or stabilize other levels of a dynamic system. But, despite that this regulatory failure defines the coercive cycle, we lack sufficient understanding about how dynamic parent and dyadic regulatory processes conjointly serve to maintain coercive patterns over time. I will present empirical evidence from studies in our laboratory that illustrate how dynamic relations between parental and dyadic regulatory processes may exacerbate the stability of maladaptive family processes, using advanced methods. Our goal is to better delineate mechanistic regulatory processes in real-time parent-child interactions to derive empirically-validated techniques with which to reduce coercive family processes in preventive interventions, thus building on Dishion’s formative contributions to prevention science.