The Relation between Mothers' Mirroring of Infants' Behavior and Maternal Mind‐Mindedness

Abstract

Maternal mind-mindedness, which is a measure of maternal mentalization involving mothers' speech, was examined as a predictor of mothers' mirroring of infant behavior during interaction. Five-month-old infants and their mothers engaged in a Still-Face Task in which the mother's mirroring of the infant's behavior was assessed. After the task, the mother was shown a video of her infant in the task and asked to comment on what was happening for her infant; her comments were assessed for mind-mindedness. Maternal mind-mindedness when mothers were asked to reflect upon what was happening for their infants during the task predicted mothers' mirroring behaviors while engaged with their infants in the task. Maternal mirroring behavior may be a manifestation of maternal mentalization that is salient to infants.

Non‐Attuned Mind‐Mindedness, Infant Negative Affect, and Emotional Availability: Assessing Mind‐Mindedness during the Still‐Face Paradigm

“…Indeed, it is noteworthy that while there was a group level average increase in negative affect across the still‐face episodes, the majority of infants showed only mild distress in response to the SFP, consistent with findings by Mesman, Linting, Joosen, Bakermans‐Kranenburg, and van IJzendoorn () and the recent study by Bigelow et al. (). Further, it is not possible to determine whether changes in infant negative affect observed across the SFP were attributable to maternal mind‐related comments during the initial play, or the pattern of maternal mind‐minded behavior over the infant's life.…”

“…Interestingly, only one mother (from a sample of 31) in the study by Bigelow et al. () using the SFP made a single non‐attuned comment. However, as already discussed, assessment of mind‐mindedness from video playback, as implemented in this study, is not directly comparable with real‐time play, and mothers may have made more non‐attuned comments had they been responding during real‐time interaction.…”

“…Bigelow et al. () explored relations between mind‐mindedness and mothers’ non‐verbal facial mirroring of infant emotional states during the SFP. This moderately stressful interactive paradigm involves an initial face‐to‐face play episode (with no toys) an episode of caregiver non‐responsiveness and a final play episode (reunion) and can be considered analogous to the separations and reunions in the Strange Situation Procedure (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, ).…”

“…We speculated that infant emotion cues might be more frequent in a stressful interactive context and that caregivers might be more likely to selectively attend to or misread negative cues, particularly if they were having difficulties regulating their own personal distress (Dykas & Cassidy, 2011;Leerkes, 2010;Lin & McFatter, 2012). To our knowledge, only two studies to date have examined mind-mindedness in attachment-activating contexts (Bigelow, Power, Bulmer, & Gerrior, 2015;Milligan, K, Benoit, & Atkinson, 2015). Both used idiosyncratic approaches to eliciting and coding mind-mindedness that differed substantially from coding manual guidelines, and neither focused on non-attuned comments.…”

Mothers' Early Mind‐Mindedness Predicts Educational Attainment in Socially and Economically Disadvantaged British Children

“…However, this should not be taken to mean that there is an association between maternal SES and early mind‐mindedness; in fact, the evidence on this link is somewhat equivocal. For example, Meins, Fernyhough, Arnott, Turner, and Leekam (); Bigelow, Power, Bulmer, and Gerrior (); and McMahon, Camberis, Berry, and Gibson () reported no association between SES and mothers' appropriate mind‐related comments, whereas Bernier et al. () and Laranjo and Bernier () reported small to medium positive correlations between SES and appropriate comments ( r s of .20 and .26, respectively).…”