Longitudinal Relationships Between Reflective Functioning, Empathy, and Externalizing Behaviors During Adolescence and Young Adulthood

Morosan, Larisa; Ghisletta, Paolo; Badoud, Deborah Myriam; Toffel, Elodie; Eliez, Stéphan; Debbané, Martin

doi:10.1007/s10578-019-00910-8

Cited by 23 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 109 publications

(83 reference statements)

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“…Finally, albeit limited, there is evidence supporting the association between the role of mentalizing in the development of internalizing and externalizing problems (Sharp et al, 2008). Nonetheless, this evidence approaches the association from either a specific psychopathological condition (e.g., autism, sexual abuse, complex trauma, and borderline symptoms; e.g., Ensink et al, 2016) or a trans-generational point of view (i.e., maternal reflecting function moderating children externalizing difficulties; e.g., Ensink et al, 2017;Dejko-Wańczyk et al, 2020), or comprise a longitudinal design to analyze the trajectories of externalizing problems based on mentalizing variations (Morosan et al, 2020).…”

Section: The Lack Of Association Between Mentalization Polarities and Internalizing Or Externalizing Symptomsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self and Other Mentalizing Polarities and Dimensions of Mental Health: Association With Types of Symptoms, Functioning and Well-Being

et al. 2021

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Research suggests that the ability to understand one’s own and others’ minds, or mentalizing, is a key factor for mental health. Most studies have focused the attention on the association between global measures of mentalizing and specific disorders. In contrast, very few studies have analyzed the association between specific mentalizing polarities and global measures of mental health. This study aimed to evaluate whether self and other polarities of mentalizing are associated with a multidimensional notion of mental health, which considers symptoms, functioning, and well-being. Additionally, the level or depth of mentalizing within each polarity was also analyzed. A sample of 214 adolescents (12–18 years old, M = 14.7, and SD = 1.7; 53.3% female) was evaluated on measures of self- (Trait Meta-Mood Scale or TMMS-24) and other- mentalizing (Adolescent Mentalizing Interview or AMI), multi-informed measures of psychopathology and functioning based on Achenbach’s system, and measures of psychological well-being (self-esteem, happiness, and motivation to life goals). Results revealed no association between mentalizing polarities and higher-order symptom factors (internalizing, externalizing, and global symptoms or “p” factor). Self-mentalizing was associated with self-esteem (B = 0.076, p < 0.0005) and motivation to life goals (B = 0.209, p = 0.002), and other-mentalizing was associated to general, social and role functioning (B = 0.475, p < 0.0005; B = 0.380, p = 0.005; and B = 0.364, p = 0.004). This association between aspects of self-other mentalizing and self-other function has important implications for treatment and prevention. Deeper mentalizing within each polarity (i.e., comprehension beyond simple attention to one’s own mental states, and mentalizing referred to attachment figures vs. mentalizing referred to the characters of a story) revealed stronger associations with functioning and well-being. Because mentalizing polarities are associated with functioning and well-being but not with symptoms, a new hypothesis is developed: mentalizing does not contribute to resiliency by preventing symptoms, but by helping to deal with them, thus improving functioning and well-being independently of psychopathology. These findings support that promoting mentalizing across development may improve mental health, even in non-clinical population.

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Section: The Lack Of Association Between Mentalization Polarities and Internalizing Or Externalizing Symptomsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self and Other Mentalizing Polarities and Dimensions of Mental Health: Association With Types of Symptoms, Functioning and Well-Being

et al. 2021

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“…Impairments in RF have been associated with poor mental health such as depression (Lemma et al, 2011;Luyten et al, 2012a;Ekeblad et al, 2016) and borderline personality disorder Bateman, 2007, 2008;Fischer-Kern et al, 2015). Reduced parental RF has also been associated with poor child development (Ensink et al, 2017;Borelli et al, 2019;Morosan et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Convergent Validity of Three Measures of Reflective Function: Parent Development Interview, Parental Reflective Function Questionnaire, and Reflective Function Questionnaire

et al. 2020

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Reflective function (RF) is defined as an individual’s ability to understand human behavior in terms of underlying mental states including thoughts, feelings, desires, beliefs, and intentions. More specifically, the capacity of parents to keep their child’s mental states in mind is referred to as parental RF. RF has been linked to adult mental health and parental RF to children’s mental health and development. The gold standard measure of RF is the interview-based Reflective Functioning Scale (RFS) applied to the Parent Development Interview (PDI) or Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), which while well validated, is time-and labor-intensive to administer. Given the increasing need for reliable, valid, and rapid RF assessment in wide-ranging settings, two alternative measures were considered including the Reflective Function Questionnaire (RFQ) and Parental Reflective Function Questionnaire (PRFQ). We determined the convergent validity of these measures in comparison with the PDI-rated RFS. A sample of mothers and fathers (n = 150) was drawn from a sub-study of the ongoing Alberta Pregnancy Outcomes and Nutrition (APrON) longitudinal cohort when their children were 42–60 months of age. Pearson correlations and multiple linear regression was conducted, followed by splitting the sample to compute Cohen’s kappas measures of agreement. Two subscales of the PRFQ correlated significantly (p < 0.05) with the gold standard PDI-rated RFS, providing evidence for convergent validity. As a brief multidimensional measure of parental RF, the PRFQ offers an alternative for measurement of RF in large-scale studies of parental development and child health.

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“…The aim of the present research is to replicate and extend previous findings from Spitzer and colleagues, while also comprehensively presenting our concerns regarding the measure. A critical reexamination and discussion of the RFQ-8 appears to be of particular importance given that researchers are increasingly adopting the measure for primary investigations of the mentalizing construct (e.g., Agostini et al, 2019;Badoud et al, 2018;Berthelot et al, 2019;Brugnera et al, 2020;Carlone & Milan, 2020;Cosenza et al, 2019;de Meulemeester et al, 2017de Meulemeester et al, , 2018Euler et al, 2019;Gambin et al, 2020;Huang et al, 2020;Li et al, 2020;Macfie et al, 2020;Morosan et al, 2019Morosan et al, , 2020Perroud et al, 2017;Sacchetti et al, 2019;Salaminios et al, 2020;Scandurra et al, 2020) or as an outcome measure for evaluating psychotherapy effectiveness (e.g., Arnfred et al, 2017;Derks et al, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

A Critical Evaluation of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire

Müller¹,

Wendt²,

Spitzer³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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The Reflective Functioning Questionnaire-8 (RFQ-8) is a short self-report measure of reflective functioning (i.e., the ability to understand mental states of both the self and others) that is presumed to capture individual differences in hypo- and hypermentalizing. Despite its broad acceptance by the field and its regular use in primary investigations of the construct, we argue that the validity of the measure is still not well established. The current research elaborates on why the proposed scoring procedure may be methodologically problematic, the item content might not sufficiently cover the full breadth of the mentalizing construct, and it is unclear whether the measure captures mentalizing processes in particular or rather general psychological impairment. In a clinical sample (N = 861) and a sample of young adults (N = 566), we explore these critical considerations and demonstrate that the RFQ-8 may assess a single latent dimension related to hypomentalizing, but provides little unique variance above and beyond broad dimensions of personality pathology and is unlikely to capture maladaptive forms of hypermentalizing. The findings cast doubt on the validity of the RFQ-8 as a measure of reflective functioning. Future research should increase validation efforts concerning the RFQ-8 or develop new measures of reflective functioning.

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Longitudinal Relationships Between Reflective Functioning, Empathy, and Externalizing Behaviors During Adolescence and Young Adulthood

Cited by 23 publications

References 109 publications

Self and Other Mentalizing Polarities and Dimensions of Mental Health: Association With Types of Symptoms, Functioning and Well-Being

Self and Other Mentalizing Polarities and Dimensions of Mental Health: Association With Types of Symptoms, Functioning and Well-Being

Convergent Validity of Three Measures of Reflective Function: Parent Development Interview, Parental Reflective Function Questionnaire, and Reflective Function Questionnaire

A Critical Evaluation of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire

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