Assessing reflective functioning in prospective adoptive parents

Saskia Malcorps,Nicole Vliegen,Eileen Tang,Arietta Slade,Sara Casalin,Patrick Luyten,Liesbet Nijssens,Luca Cerniglia

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0245852

Saskia Malcorps, Nicole Vliegen + Show 6 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245852

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Abstract

The capacity for reflective functioning (RF) or mentalizing of adoptive parents is hypothesized to play an important role in fostering socio-emotional development in adopted children. This paper reports on the development and preliminary validation of the Adoption Expectations Interview (AEI), a semi-structured interview to assess RF in prospective adoptive parents. The AEI was developed based on the Pregnancy Interview, Parent Development Interview, and Working Model of the Child Interview, three interviews that have been used to assess RF in biological parents, to capture RF before child arrival in prospective adoptive parents. In a sample of 96 prospective adoptive parents, the Reflective Functioning Scale, as applied to the AEI (AEI-RFS) showed good reliability, with strong correlations between the different demand items, high internal consistency, and good to excellent inter-rater reliability. A principal component analysis yielded one component, suggesting that the items measured a unidimensional factor. Preliminary evidence for the construct validity of the AEI-RFS was demonstrated by significant associations between the AEI-RFS and well-validated measures of mentalizing, attachment dimensions, and interpersonal functioning.

Highlights

Parental mentalizing, or parental reflective functioning (PRF), refers to the parent’s capacity to think about their child as having an inner world and to treat the child as a psychological agent with his or her own feelings, wishes, and desires, as well as to recognize that the child’s state of mind can influence the parent’s own mental states and behavior [1]
We report on the development and preliminary validation of the Reflective Functioning Scale (RFS) [14] as rated on the Adoption Expectations Interview (AEI) [15], a semi-structured interview adapted from three measures that have been typically used to assess RF in parents: the Pregnancy Interview (PI) [16], the Parent Development Interview [17] as adapted for adoptive parents [18], and the Working Model of the Child Interview (WMCI) [19]
We report on the development and preliminary validation of the AEI [15], an interview that aims to assess RF in prospective adoptive parents

Summary

Introduction

Parental reflective functioning (PRF), refers to the parent’s capacity to think about their child as having an inner world and to treat the child as a psychological agent with his or her own feelings, wishes, and desires, as well as to recognize that the child’s state of mind can influence the parent’s own mental states and behavior [1]. Recent studies suggest that high levels of PRF may be an important protective factor, among children who grow up in contexts of psychological or social risk [6,7,8].

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