Beyond Demand Avoidance: The Volitional Authorship and Need-Protection Model (VANP) as a Working Theoretical Model of PDA
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This working paper introduces the Volitional Authorship and Need-Protection Model (VANP), a developing theoretical model proposed by Danielle Cook for understanding PDA-like responses beyond the observable behaviour of demand avoidance. The model proposes that protective responses may arise when a person predicts interference with volitional authorship or threat to another psychologically important need. It considers how perception, prediction, self-perception, relational context, sensory and interoceptive factors, current capacity and threat-awareness may influence whether protection becomes internalised or externalised. VANP distinguishes experienced authorship from simple choice and considers authorship across different stages of action, including intention, selection, initiation, execution, continuation and termination. The paper also develops a broader Need-Protection Architecture and examines hypotheses concerning attunement, anticipatory threat, observation, transitions, sensory authorship, pain, humiliation, capacity, recovery, reflective processing and repair. The model developed from approximately 29 years of lived experience, caregiving, foster care, parenting and naturalistic observation, including repeated pattern comparison across approximately ten individuals with varied diagnosed and undiagnosed neurodevelopmental, behavioural and attachment-related presentations. These observations were not collected as a formal research study and are presented as a basis for theory generation rather than empirical validation. The paper situates VANP alongside existing literature concerning PDA, autonomy, agency, psychological reactance, predictive processing, sensory processing and related constructs, and sets out falsifiable predictions for future empirical investigation. VANP is presented as a developing, non-peer-reviewed theoretical model awaiting independent empirical investigation. Its purpose is not to establish a new diagnostic explanation, but to generate testable questions about what protective responses may be protecting, how threat is perceived and predicted, and under what conditions capacity, authorship and participation may be restored.
Author: Cook, Danielle Mary
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7212032087
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