Abstract
Maternal mentalization refers to a mother’s capacity to understand mental-states of herself and her child and to regard her child as a psychological agent. In mother-infant interactions, this capacity is commonly conceptualized as maternal mind-mindedness, which can be divided into two dimensions: appropriate and nonattuned interpretations of the infants’ mental-states. Appropriate mind-mindedness refers to interpretations that seem to be compatible with the infant’s behaviors, whereas nonattuned mind-mindedness refers to noncompatible interpretations. The aim of this study was to investigate the cognitive mechanisms that contribute to mind-mindedness. Specifically, we investigated the role of executive functions in appropriate and nonattuned mind-mindedness, and the moderating roles of two infant-related factors, prematurity (as a stressful context) and child temperament (as a context of unpredictability and negative emotionality). To this end, mother-infant free play interactions were coded for mind-mindedness in a sample of 102 mothers and their 6-month-old infants (61 preterm, 41 full-term). When children were 66-months old, mothers completed cognitive tasks that assessed working memory updating, resistance to interference, response inhibition, and shifting. Appropriate mind-mindedness was positively associated with updating, and this link was stronger when infant temperament was rated as more difficult. Furthermore, among mothers of full-term infants, mothers’ resistance to interference was negatively associated with nonattuned mind-mindedness. This link was not evident in the stressful context of premature birth. Mothers’ response inhibition and shifting were not associated with either of the mind-mindedness dimensions. Implications on understanding variability in maternal mentalization during mother-infant interactions and the roles of executive functions in parenting are discussed.
Highlights
In our everyday lives, we take part in innumerable social interactions, from interacting with colleagues at work and socializing with friends to raising children
We recently found evidence indicating that such effects take place among mothers under contextual stress, due to premature birth and household chaos [93]: the well-established link between appropriate MM and maternal sensitive behavior was evident under low stressful contexts, but disappeared when examined under stressful contexts
We proposed that Executive functions (EFs) would contribute to maternal mentalization by potentially providing mothers the means to keep track of mental states in the dyad, to suppress distracting irrelevant information and automatic responses, and to switch between their own and their children’s perspectives in the dyad
Summary
We take part in innumerable social interactions, from interacting with colleagues at work and socializing with friends to raising children. Maternal executive functions and mentalization information obtained from medical records, psychological symptoms) as well as information that can potentially make participants identifiable (e.g., ages and dates of birth of parents and children, parents’ education and employment information). The informed consent procedure did not include a statement regarding public availability of anonymized data
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