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The coactive systems model of human development works to integrate insights from constructivist, socio-cultural and embodied models of acting, thinking and feeling.   The coactive systems approach is informed by the idea that the unit of analysis of psychological processes and their development is the person-environment system in all of its complexity.  

Figure 1 provides a schematic representation of the coactive functioning of person-environment systems.   As indicated in Figure 3, from a coactive systems view, the person-environment system is composed of five basic classes of elements: Within a given socio-cultural context, integrative individual action is always directed toward some physical or psychological object.  In social interaction with other persons, individuals engage dialogically with other persons through the use of mediational means (culturally appropriated signs, symbols).     At its most basic level, a coactive systems conception maintains that action and experience is the coactive product of relations among evolving elements of the system rather than as a function of the operation of any single element (Fischer & Bidell, 1996, 1998; Gottlieb, 2002; Gottlieb, Wahlsten & Lickliter 1998; Lewis & Granic, 2000; Mascolo, 2003; Mascolo & Fischer, 1998; in press; Oyama, 2000).    As such, human action is the emergent product of relations that occur between and among elements of the person-environment system.

To illustrate the functioning of the person-environment system in individual activity, consider the simple act of drinking a cup of coffee.   We begin our illustration with the element of action depicted in Figure 3.  In characterizing the nature of individual action, we invoke Fischer’s (1980; Fischer & Bidell, 1998) concept of skill.   A skill consists of the capacity to control elements of acting, thinking and feeling within particular behavioral domains and social contexts (Fischer, 1980; Fischer & Bidell, 1998; Mascolo & Fischer, 1999; in press).   Skills, however, are not properties of individual persons.   Any skilled action is necessarily performed on some object within a particular physical or social context.   Skilled actions are therefore intentional in the sense that they take objects; they are either performed on something or are about something (Fischer, 1980; Mascolo & Fischer, 1999; Merleau-Ponty, 1945; Searle, 1969; Vedeler, 1987).   The act of drinking a cup of coffee is composed of coordinate acts of reaching, grasping and moving that are performed on and with the cup.   When drinking a cup of coffee, the physical structure of the cup plays a direct role in the coordination of the drinking action.  An individual must adjust his or her reaching and grasping movements to the particular contours, weight and structure of the cup.  In this way, although actions are performed on objects, objects function as an actual part of ongoing behavior.

Simultaneously, the context in which an action occurs also plays a central role in the emergence and execution of action.  The actions that one deploys to drink a cup of coffee at the breakfast table are different from the actions required to drink a similar cup of coffee in a moving car or while trying to drink inconspicuously while sitting in the audience of a psychological conference.   Further, the act of drinking is as much a cultural action as it is a social and person one.   The act of drinking is mediated through the use of cultural tools.   One may use a different type of cup in each of these three social contexts discussed above – one’s favorite mug at breakfast; an portable coffee mug to sip coffee in the car; or a Styrofoam cup with a plastic lid while drinking at the conference talk.  Each of these cultural tools provides a different type of means that mediates the act of drinking.   Finally, other people figure prominently in our acts of drinking.   When we mutually adjust our sips to fall into the breaks of our conversational turns, it is clear that we are regulating each other’s drinking behavior.   As this example indicates, the elements of the person-environment system do not function independent of one another.  As such, control over any action is necessarily distributed among coactions that occur between multiple elements of the person-environment system.  

The concept of coaction (Gottlieb, 1992; 2002; 1997; Gottlieb et al., 1997) or co-regulation (Fogel, 1992; Lewis, 1996; 2000; Mascolo, Fischer & Neimeyer, 1999) is central to a coactive systems approach to development.   The concept of coaction refers to the idea that elements within a given system simultaneously and mutually-regulate or influence each other’s functioning.   The mutual regulation of component systems occurs both within and between persons.   In social interaction, for example, social partners mutually regulate each other’s actions, thoughts and feelings through the process of communication.   We often depict the process of communication mechanistically in terms of individual senders forwarding discrete and bounded messages back and forth to each other.  From this view, a discrete message originates within a single individual and is forwarded through a fixed communicational channel (e.g., as in telegraph, mail or e-mail).  After the individual sends the message, it remains fixed and cannot be changed throughout the process of transmission.   After the correspondent receives the message, she must encode it.   Only after she has encoded the message can she switch roles from receiver to sender, and continue the exchange. 

Face-to-face communication does not proceed in this way.  In ordinary interaction, interlocutors are simultaneously active as both senders and receivers.   As one person speaks, the other person provides continuous feedback in the form of verbal and non-verbal indicators, nodding of the head, changing facial expression, direction of gaze, the time allowed to elapse before speaking.   As a result, the “message” is not fixed and is free to change in the very process of communication.   In social interaction, meanings are jointly constructed as social partner’s co-regulate each other’s actions, thoughts and feelings.   In this sense, co-regulation refers to the process by which social partners simultaneously and continuously adjust their ongoing actions, thoughts and feelings to each other (Fogel, 1993; Mascolo & Fischer, 1998).   It follows that within co-regulation, the actions of the other are part of the process of the self’s actions, and vice-versa.

To say that social partners co-regulate each other in social interaction is not to deny that individuals exert control over their own actions, thoughts and feelings.  As indicated above, a skill consists of the capacity to control elements of acting, thinking and feeling within particular behavioral domains and social contexts.  As such, skills function as control structures; they specify the specific coordination elements of action over which individual actors are able to exert control within a given context.  However, although skills are control structures, they are necessarily tied to particular tasks, task domains and even social contexts.   A change in context, task domain or interlocutor can easily change the nature and developmental level of an individual’s skillful behavior.   It follows that in social interaction, skills function within co-regulated interaction.   Individuals adjust their skill structures to the ongoing and anticipated actions of their interlocutors.