Prenatal Reflective Functioning and Accumulated Risk as Predictors of Maternal Interactive Behavior During Free Play, the Still‐Face Paradigm, and Two Teaching Tasks

Abstract

This study examined whether prenatal reflective functioning (RF) was related to mothers’ interactive style across contexts with their 6‐month‐old infants (M age = 6.02 months, SD = 0.41, 54% boys), and to what extent quality of prenatal RF could account for the influence of accumulated risk on maternal interactive behavior. Accumulated risk was defined as the sum‐score of a selection of risk factors that have been associated with suboptimal infant development. Mother–infant dyads (N = 133) were observed during free play, two teaching tasks, and the Still‐Face Paradigm (SFP). Better prenatal RF was associated with more positive maternal behavior in all settings and less negative behavior during teaching and SFP reengagement. Accumulated risk and prenatal RF predicted shared variance in maternal interactive behavior (with unique predictive effects observed only for RF on sensitivity during teaching and SFP play, and for accumulated risk on sensitivity and positive engagement during SFP play, and internalizing‐helplessness during SFP reengagement). Accumulated risk had an indirect effect on maternal sensitivity during teaching and SFP play through prenatal RF. These findings suggest not only that RF may be targeted prenatally to improve mother–infant interactions, but also that enhancing RF skills may ameliorate some of the negative consequences from more stable perinatal risk factors that influence parent–child interactions.

Maternal Mentalization and Behavior Under Stressful Contexts: The Moderating Roles of Prematurity and Household Chaos

“…Second, adding to recent findings regarding mentalization and family interactions (Jessee et al., ; Marcu et al., ), our findings suggest that under low contextual stress, a mother's spontaneous ability to understand her infants' mental states contributes not only to the quality of the mother–infant relationship but also to the quality of the family interaction as a whole. In line with previous studies, our results also indicated that mothers under high CSC risk were less sensitive than mothers under low CSC (e.g., Browne et al., ; Neuhauser, ; Smaling, Huijbregts, Suurland, et al., ).…”

“…It is well accepted that risk has a cumulative effect, such that the presence of several risk factors amplifies their negative effect on child development (e.g., Atzaba-Poria, Pike, & DeaterDeckard, 2004;Evans, Li, & Whipple, 2013) as well as on the family system (Browne, Leckie, Prime, Perlman, & Jenkins, 2016;Browne, Plamondon, Prime, Puente-Duran, & Wade, 2015). Importantly, cumulative risk has been found to be negatively associated with maternal sensitivity, involving distal environment and child-driven stress risk factors (Browne et al, 2016;Neuhauser, 2016;Smaling, Huijbregts, Suurland, et al, 2016). Furthermore, previous research has shown that environmentalfamilial risk among mothers of preterm infants predicted continuation of maternal emotional distress from birth to 24 months, suggesting that the combination of prematurity together with other environment-driven stressors may be associated with chronic stress (Poehlmann, Schwichtenberg, Bolt, & Dilworth-Bart, 2009).…”

Mentalizing Makes Parenting Work: A Review about Parental Reflective Functioning and Clinical Interventions to Improve It

“…A more recent study (Huth-Bocks et al, 2014) found that secure mothers (assessed by the Attachment Script Assessment, ASA; Waters and Rodrigues-Doolabh, 2004, Unpublished) from a high risk sample demonstrated higher PDI-RF, and that it was in turn significantly associated with positive parental interactive behavior during play and teaching tasks with 7-month-old children. These findings were replicated in a recent study (Smaling et al, 2016a) that found that mothers with higher parental reflective functioning, as measured during pregnancy, exhibited more positive behavior during free-play, teaching tasks, and the Still Face Paradigm (Tronick et al, 1978) with their 6-month-old children. The significant relationship between maternal PDI-RF and parenting behavior was also found in a recent study (Stacks et al, 2014) on a relatively large and mixed sample consisting of women both with and without a history of childhood maltreatment from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.…”

The effectiveness of Nurture and Play: a mentalisation-based parenting group intervention for prenatally depressed mothers

“…Pregnancy is a unique phase that requires the mother to imagine the future and extend her current understanding of herself, her spouse and life situation to include the child (Slade et al, 2009). Prenatal RF serves preparation to motherhood and some research shows that high prenatal RF, characterised by the capability of imagining oneself and the future child positively, predicts high quality of parentinfant interaction (Smaling et al, 2016). In the postpartum period, parental RF is crucial for sensitive caretaking, as it fuels the mother's accurate understanding of the intentional states of her infant and accurate interpretation of infant distress cues .…”