When do mothers’ executive functions contribute to their representations of their child’s mind? A contextual view on parental reflective functioning and mind-mindedness.

Abstract

Parental mentalization refers to parents’ capacity to treat their children as having minds of their own and consider the mental states underlying their behaviors. This study examined the roles of mothers’ executive functions (EFs), a group of processes supporting self-regulation, in 2 aspects of parental mentalization—spontaneity as measured by mind-mindedness (MM), and complexity as measured by parental reflective functioning (PRF)—while examining child- and family related contextual-moderators. Ninety-nine mothers of 66-month-old preschool children (40 full-term, 59 preterm) completed EFs tasks, were interviewed regarding their child and coparenting, and rated their perception of their child as being difficult (i.e., difficult behavior and negative emotionality). EFs were unrelated to MM. However, EFs were related to PRF when children were rated as more difficult, and when mothers reported high coparenting dissatisfaction; moreover, EFs and PRF were associated among mothers of full-term children, but not in the preterm group. Findings indicate that EFs contribute to the complexity and coherence of maternal mentalization, especially in contexts in which regulation is required for being able to consider the child’s mind (difficult child, coparenting dissatisfaction), but not in stressful contexts that are likely to elicit automaticity (prematurity). EFs, however, do not seem to contribute to spontaneous attribution of mental states to the child, when complexity is not considered.

Parental Mentalizing During a Pandemic: Use of Mental-State Language on Parenting Social Media Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Nonetheless, there are aspects of parental mentalization that an automated dictionary-based measure may overlook and thus be less accurate than manual coding, particularly of nuanced mental-state misattributions (although machine-learning-based algorithms may detect nuances given enough exemplars). However, note that most measures of parental mentalization capture only some dimensions of mentalizing, and no current measure captures all dimensions (see Yatziv, Kessler, & Atzaba-Poria, 2020). Moreover, some words in the MSL dictionary reflect mental states in some contexts but not in others (e.g., “affect”); however, we believe that these instances are not likely to substantially affect time-based group comparisons, and this aspect has also been accounted for in analyzing the norm-based mental-physical scores.…”

“…Outside the parenting context, mentalization can be considered across four dimensions that may be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic: (a) automatic mentalization versus controlled mentalization, (b) cognitive mentalization versus affective mentalization, (c) mentalization about oneself versus mentalization about other people, and (d) mentalizing based on internal features of experiences versus external features of experiences (see Luyten & Fonagy, 2015). In this study, we focused on the affective–cognitive and self–other dimensions—which generally map onto the automaticity versus control dimension, respectively, wherein high load (i.e., caregiving demands in this context) and stress are thought to affect primarily controlled aspects of mentalizing in general (Luyten & Fonagy, 2015) and specifically in parenting when thinking about others (i.e., the child; Yatziv et al, 2018; Yatziv, Kessler, & Atzaba-Poria, 2020).…”

Children under fire: The role of maternal caregiving, reflection functioning, and posttraumatic stress disorder.

“…The third moderation hypothesis, whereby mothers' perceiving of their child as "difficult" to manage, would moderate the link between mothers' reflection and children's maladjustment, was also supported. Research suggests that parental reflective function enables parents to understand their children's behavior, and regulate the negative, intense emotions triggered in their children by normal parent-child stresses (Yatziv et al, 2020); however, child difficulty features challenge maternal reflective functioning, and those with low reflective functioning find it hard to sooth their child's distress, thereby potentially exacerbating their child's difficulty (Yatziv et al, 2020).…”

“…Therefore, it is considered as the most common impaired emotional regulation strategy, as it exacerbates a person's distress (Nolen-Hoeksema et al, 2008). Reflective functioning, and its mentalizing potential, is also considered a fundamental ability that triggers the activation of the caregiving system (Yatziv et al, 2020). Whereas high maternal reflective functioning is linked to sensitive and responsive caregiving, maternal rumination affects a mother's responsiveness to her child owing to reduced cognitive control and cognitive biases (DeJong et al, 2016).…”

Parental Reflective Functioning and Its Association With Parenting Behaviors in Infancy and Early Childhood: A Systematic Review

“…Thus, Buttitta et al (2019) argued that this behavior captures a rather cognitive capacity in the parent–child interaction that might be more affected by socioeconomic hardship than social–emotional growth fostering. Similarly, PRF is related to cognitive capacities such as executive function and can be impaired by chronic stress ( Yatziv et al, 2020 ). There is also evidence of a negative link between PRF and long-term unemployment, which is related to social exclusion and isolation ( Sleed et al, 2020 ).…”