Parental embodied mentalizing: how the nonverbal dance between parents and infants predicts children’s socio-emotional functioning

ABSTRACT

Parental mentalizing – the parent’s ability to envision the child’s mental states (such as desires, thoughts, or wishes) – has been argued to underlie a parent’s ability to respond sensitively to their child’s emotional needs, and thereby promote advantageous cognitive and socio-emotional development. Mentalizing is typically operationalized in terms of how parents talk to or about their infants. This work extends research on mentalizing by operationalizing parental mentalizing exclusively in terms of nonverbal, bodily based, interactive behavior, namely parental embodied mentalizing(PEM). The purpose of the current research was twofold: (1) to establish the reliability and validity of the PEM coding system; and (2) to evaluate whether such measurement predicts infant and child cognitive and socio-emotional functioning. Assessing 200 mother–infant dyads at 6 months using the coding of PEM proved both reliable and valid, including predicting child attachment security at 15 and 36 months, and language abilities, academic skills, behavior problems, and social competence at 54 months, in many cases even after taking into consideration traditional measures of parenting, namely maternal sensitivity. Conceptual, empirical, and clinical implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Mentalizing
• parent–infant
• nonverbal
• maternal sensitivity
• attachment security
• externalizing

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the families who participated in the study and made this work possible. The authors would also like to thank the IPA and the European Commission for their support of this work. Finally, the first author would like to deeply thank Rose Spencer for her contribution to this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Although it would be ideal to compare multiple approaches to the measurement of mentalizing, the NICHD data set does not include parental mentalizing measures.

2. For a manual describing the PEM coding system in greater detail, as well as for information about training on the instrument, please contact the first author, Dana Shai, [email protected]

3. A further spatial distinction used when coding PEM involves three planes that refer to the orientation of movement in relation to the ground: horizontal (movement appearing sideward), vertical (movements are directed up or down), and sagittal (movements directed forward and backward) (Bartenieff & Lewis, 1980; Kestenberg, 1975; Laban, 1960; Lamb & Watson, 1999).

Additional information

Funding

The first author was supported by a Marie Curie Intra-European fellowship, awarded by the European Commission, and a grant awarded by the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA).