Abstract
The present study investigated whether, and to what extent, reflective functioning (RF) during preadolescence is associated with maternal attachment security and RF, and with the child’s attachment security. Thirty-nine mother–preadolescent child dyads from a non-clinical population participated in the study. Maternal and child RF were assessed by applying the Reflective Functioning Scale to the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and to the Child Attachment Interview transcripts. Children of mothers who showed a secure attachment model regarding the relationship with their parents during childhood reported higher levels of RF than the children of mothers who were classified as insecure on the AAI. Child RF was positively associated with maternal “Coherence of the Mind” on the AAI and negatively associated with maternal derogation of attachment. A strong, significant association was also found between child attachment security and child RF. Children who were rated as being more emotionally open, more able to balance positive and negative descriptions of their parents, more prone to support their assertions through examples, and more able to positively resolve conflicts with their parents showed higher RF. On the contrary, children who resorted to a higher extent to idealization and dismissal toward their parents showed a lesser degree of RF. Notably, a very strong association was found between the score on the “Overall coherence” subscale and the child’s ability to mentalize mixed-ambivalent mental states in the context of their family relationships. As expected, child and maternal RF resulted significantly positively correlated with each other. In particular, only maternal RF (and not maternal attachment security) predicted child RF, and only maternal ability to mentalize mixed-ambivalent mental states predicted the corresponding ability in the children.
Highlights
The development of the human ability to understand the mental states of oneself and of others has been studied by philosophers (e.g., Brentano, 1924; Dennett, 1987; Fodor, 1987), cognitive and developmental psychologists (e.g., Baron-Cohen et al, 1985; Dunn, 1988; Gopnik and Astington, 1988), and neuroscientists (e.g., LeDoux, 1996)
In addition to the overall Reflective Functioning Scale (RFS) rating score, we considered three further reflective functioning (RF) variables on the basis of a recent study (Rosso et al, 2015), namely the frequency of RF in the context of positive, negative, and mixed-ambivalent mental states (e.g., “I felt secure with my mum, because she always tried to comfort me”; “I often got mad at my mother, it seemed that she could not understand me when I was sad”; “I really don’t know how the relationship with my mother was when I was a child, sometimes I felt well with her, sometimes I felt some kind of irritation, maybe I was really sensitive to her sudden mood swings, without understanding that she was terribly depressed”)
No significant correlation emerged between maternal level of education, maternal RF (r = −0.032), and child RF (r = 0.206)
Summary
The development of the human ability to understand the mental states of oneself and of others has been studied by philosophers (e.g., Brentano, 1924; Dennett, 1987; Fodor, 1987), cognitive and developmental psychologists (e.g., Baron-Cohen et al, 1985; Dunn, 1988; Gopnik and Astington, 1988), and neuroscientists (e.g., LeDoux, 1996) This ability is commonly referred to as “mentalization.” a growing body of evidence supports the notion that the construct of mentalization includes several components which are only partially correlated to each other (Fonagy et al, 2012). Such a mentalizing mother helps the child to recognize, tolerate, and regulate his/her emotional experiences through her ability to represent them, through her gestures and actions, and later by playing and talking in terms of mental states (Gergely and Watson, 1996; Meins et al, 2002)
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