Association between parent’s and adult offspring’s mentalizing capacity: The moderating role of child’s temperament

Abstract

There is a lack of studies evaluating temperament as a predictor of one's mentalizing capacity and its moderating role in the relationship between mentalization in parents and their offspring. So, the aim of this study is to examine whether certain types of children's temperament and their parents' mentalizing capacity can predict children's mentalizing capacity and whether children's temperament is a moderator in the context of parent-child relationship. The sample consisted of 388 participants, i.e., 194 dyads of primary caregivers and their adult children. In order to operationalize the mentalizing capacity (of both parents and their adult children), we used The Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (Fonagy etal., 2017). Different types of temperament in children were measured using the Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa, Paris and San Diego - auto-questionnaire - short version (Akiskal, Mendlowicz, Jean-Louis etal., J Affect Disord, 85, 45-52, 2005). The results indicate that parents' mentalizing capacity is a significant predictor of this competence in their children. Anxious and depressive temperaments directly predict higher scores on certainty about mental states, while hyperthymic temperament is a negative predictor of a good mentalizing ability. Furthermore, certain temperament types, irritable and hyperthymic, are statistically significant moderators in the relationship between the individual's and the parent's mentalizing capacity. The results suggest the possibility that hyperthymic temperament in children can alleviate the negative consequences of low mentalizing capacity of parents on mentalizing capacity of their children. Finally, the results suggest that positive relationship between high mentalizing capacity of parents and children is especially distinctive for children with irritable temperament.