Parental reflective functioning and preschool children’s psychosocial functioning: the mediating role of children’s emotion regulation

Ghanbari, Saeed; Vahidi, Elahe; Behzadpoor, Samaneh; Goudarzi, Zahra; Ghabezi, Fateme

doi:10.1080/17405629.2022.2079631

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Regarding the fact that PRF fosters numerous children’s developmental outcomes, future studies on the PRFQ should include not only mothers’ data but also some child variables such as, e.g., attachment security [ 75 ], the capacity of affect regulation and psychosocial functioning [ 11 ], or children’s mentalizing capacity [ 9 ]. This would allow researchers to explore the validity of the PRFQ in more detail.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Psychometric evaluation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire in Polish mothers

Kamza,

Luyten,

Piotrowski

2024

PLoS ONE

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Parental reflective functioning (PRF) refers to a parent’s capacity to reflect on and understand the inner mental states of their child, their own mental states with regard to their child, and how these mental states may influence their behavior and interactions. This capacity has been shown to foster secure attachment in children and their socio-emotional development. The present study examined the psychometric properties of the Polish translation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ), a brief screening measure of PRF, in a large community sample of Polish mothers of children aged 0–5 years (N = 979). Confirmatory factor analysis supported the hypothesized three-factor structure of the PRFQ, which consists of three subscales: prementalizing modes, certainty about mental states, and interest and curiosity in mental states. However, item loadings suggested that the 15-item version fitted the data better than the original 18-item version. These three PRFQ subscales exhibited satisfactory and moderate six-month test–retest reliability. They also correlated in theoretically expected ways with several criterion measures such as maternal attachment, maternal parenting stress, parental role restriction, depression severity, and borderline symptoms. In conclusion, this study is the first to provide preliminary evidence for the reliability and validity of the PRFQ as a measure of parental reflective functioning in Polish mothers.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This, in turn, leads to a low sense of attachment security in their children [ 9 , 10 ]. The latter predicts difficulties in mentalizing and emotion regulation in children and is related to distortions in their psychosocial functioning [ 11 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychometric evaluation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire in Polish mothers

Kamza,

Luyten,

Piotrowski

2024

PLoS ONE

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“…It is possible that, because many of the items on this subscale use negatively laden words (e.g., child embarrassing , annoying , or confusing the parent, parent finding play hard ), it may elicit a social desirability bias which affects reporting on some of the items. However, a range of studies have found acceptable internal consistency for this subscale (e.g., Álvarez et al., 2021; Anis et al., 2020; Ghanbari et al., 2022), so there is no clear consensus regarding the reliability and validity of the prementalizing modes subscale.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early psychosocial risk factors and postnatal parental reflective functioning

Arkle,

Larkin,

Wang

et al. 2023

Infancy

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Psychosocial factors have been found to relate to parental reflective functioning (PRF), a parent's ability to mentalize about themselves and their child. Relations between maternal psychosocial risk factors and PRF were investigated in a community sample. A sample of mothers (n = 146) was assessed for risk factors when infants were 6 months, infant temperament was assessed using an observational measure, and PRF was assessed with the Parent Development Interview‐Revised (PDI). PRF was measured again with the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ) when children were 4 years (n = 105) and 5 years (n = 92), with an additional sample of mothers (n = 48) tested at these two timepoints. Results showed that in infancy, total maternal psychosocial risk related to lower PDI‐PRF; regression analyses highlighted low socioeconomic status, unplanned pregnancy, and low maternal anxiety as independent predictors of lower PDI‐PRF. PDI‐PRF scores at 6 months did not relate to PRFQ scores, but PRFQ subscales showed stability over time from age 4–5. Results are discussed with regard to the impact of maternal psychosocial risk and infant temperament on PRF and the stability and concordance of PRF measures.

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“…In the context of the parent-child relationship, parental mentalizing is defined as the parent's tendency to treat their child as a psychological agent with a mind of their own, that is, the parent's willingness to guess and envision what mental states may lie behind the child's immediate behavior [40,41]. Theory and empirical findings suggest that parental mentalizing is vital for a range of child psychosocial outcomes, such as the development of emotion regulation and emotion understanding in self, and others (e.g., [42][43][44][45][46][47][48]), executive functions, and language development [49]. It is assumed that mentalizing enables parents to provide a framework of presenting the child to internal experiences by "playing along" with the child's mental world [50,51] and that this process is fundamental for the child's emerging understanding of the representational nature of the external world [40,51].…”

Section: Parental Mentalizing and Children's Pretend Playmentioning

confidence: 99%

The significance of parental mentalizing for four-year-old children’s solitary pretend play

Smith-Nielsen,

Stuart,

Wendelboe

et al. 2024

PLoS ONE

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Background Pretend play is a signature behavior of early childhood and is considered to reflect the child’s emerging symbolic function, enabling the interpretation of social signals, language development, and emotion understanding. While theory links parental mentalizing with children’s pretend play, only a few studies have investigated this association. These studies are limited to infancy and early toddlerhood, and child pretend play is assessed during play with an adult (social play). Based on the assumption that child solitary pretend play reflects the child’s ‘baseline’ pretend play ability, in this study, we investigated children’s pretend play at its peak, i.e., during the preschool age, without the facilitation of another player. The overall objective was to investigate if parental mentalizing increases pretend play complexity in children. Methods The sample consisted 99 Danish mothers and their 4-year-old children. Employing a cross-sectional design, we hypothesized that parental mental state language, as an indicator of ‘online’ mentalizing during interaction with the child, is a mechanism through which ‘offline’ mentalizing, measured as parental reflective functioning, is associated with child solitary pretend play. Child pretend play complexity was observed and coded with an adapted version of the 12-Step Play Scale. Maternal offline mentalizing was assessed with the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire, and maternal online mentalizing was assessed by coding the mothers’ mental state language during interaction with the child using a modified version of the mind-mindedness coding scheme. Results While there was no direct effect of maternal offline reflective functioning on child pretend play, online mental state language mediated the link between offline maternal reflective functioning and child pretend play. Conclusions These results provide support for the theoretically assumed link between parental mentalizing and children’s capacity for pretend play. Furthermore, our study contributes to the literature on parental mentalization, suggesting that parental mentalizing facilitates child development only if the parent can translate this ability into ’mentalizing in action’.

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Parental reflective functioning and preschool children’s psychosocial functioning: the mediating role of children’s emotion regulation

Cited by 7 publications

References 47 publications

Psychometric evaluation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire in Polish mothers

Psychometric evaluation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire in Polish mothers

Early psychosocial risk factors and postnatal parental reflective functioning

The significance of parental mentalizing for four-year-old children’s solitary pretend play

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