Developmental outcomes of maternal mind-mindedness

2.6.1 Mind-mindedness and positive relations with secure attachment

The formation of secure attachments has been associated with a variety of positive developmental outcomes. For example, Bohlin, Hagekull, and Rydell (2000)

reported that children who had been assessed as securely attached as infants were found to have improved social functioning at school, being more socially active, popular and reporting less social anxiety than those who had been insecurely attached as infants. Secure attachment also appears to be a protective factor and

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has been found to be associated with better psychological health including lower anxiety (Collins & Read, 1990) and an increased ability to regulate affect through interpersonal relatedness (Simpson, Rholes, & Nelligan, 1992).

Supporting the rationale for its development, mind-mindedness has been linked to secure attachment relationships (Arnott & Meins, 2007; Lundy, 2003; Meins et al., 1998, 2001). Meins et al. (1998) found that mothers of securely attached children showed a greater likelihood to describe their children with mental characteristics when interviewed, in other words, to be more mind-minded. However, attachment was measured when the infants were 12 months old and the mind-mindedness measure was carried out when they were 3 years old and so it was not known whether a tendency to be mind-minded was present when the children were infants. It could then be said that mind-mindedness was associated with secure attachment but not that it was a precursor of secure attachment.

Meins et al. (2001) went a step further when they found that mind-mindedness, specifically whether mothers made appropriate mind-related comments in a play session with their infants at 6 months, was a significant predictor of attachment security assessed using the Strange Situation procedure at 12 months. Mothers who demonstrated higher levels of mind-mindedness by producing a greater proportion of comments appropriate to their child’s internal states were more likely to have securely attached infants than those who produced a smaller proportion of appropriate comments. Lundy (2003) also explored maternal mind-mindedness during interactions at 6 months but subsequently assessed infant attachment security at approximately 13 months using a different measure to Meins et al., the Attachment Q-set (AQS; Waters, 1987). The frequency of mind-related comments was found to positively correlate with increased levels of attachment scores. One category of appropriate mind-related comments, those related to infants’ general thought processes, knowledge or desires, was found to predict infant-mother attachment scores accounting for 33% of the variance, further supporting the link between mind-mindedness and attachment security. The authors also found that the frequency of interactional synchrony, defined as the “extent to which interaction appeared to be reciprocal and mutually rewarding” (Isabella, Belsky, & von Eye, 1989, p. 13), mediated the relationship between mothers’ mind-related comments and attachment security. This linguistic element of mind-mindedness is in line with Bowlby’s belief that parents, by engaging in verbal dialogue, could become

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psychological secure bases for their children with a secure relationship being characterised by open communication.

2.6.2 Mind-mindedness and relations with the transmission gap

Arnott and Meins (2007) provided preliminary support for the possibility that mind- mindedness may mediate the relation between mothers’ attachment representations and mother-infant attachment security. The study explored possible relations with both mothers and fathers and included 25 couples and three solo mothers. Regarding the mothers, it investigated how mothers’ antenatal attachment representations assessed using the AAI during the last trimester of pregnancy related to their maternal mind-mindedness in infant-mother interaction when the infants were 6 months old and to infant-mother attachment security assessed using the strange situation procedure at 12 months old. The small sample meant that it was not possible to test predictors of infant-mother attachment and meditational pathways using the optimal statistical analysis. However, 100% of infants were securely attached if their mothers were autonomous and high in maternal mind- mindedness and 80% of infants were insecurely attached if their mothers were nonautonomous and low in maternal mind-mindedness.

There is a possibility that links between mothers’ attachment representations and mind-mindedness may not explain the mechanism through which mind-mindedness predicts attachment security. Laranjo, Bernier, and Meins (2008) found that

maternal sensitivity rated using the Maternal Behavior Q-Sort (Pederson, Moran, Sitko, Campbell, Ghesquire, & Acton, 1990) mediated the relation between mind- mindedness and infant attachment. This supported Meins’ (1997) suggestion that mind-mindedness is a prerequisite for maternal sensitivity. This is in contrast to the later study by Meins et al. (2001), which found that sensitivity and mind-mindedness were independent predictors of security. However, Laranjo and colleagues focused on subtypes of appropriate mind-related comments and did not include non-attuned comments in the analyses. Another explanation for this difference is that different methodologies were employed. Attachment security was measured by Laranjo et al. using the Attachment Q-Sort (Waters, 1987) which does not allow specific

attachment categories to be explored whereas Meins et al. used the Strange

Situation coding procedure (Ainsworth & Wittig, 1969). Whether mind-mindedness is viewed as an independent predictor of infant-mother attachment security or as being mediated by maternal sensitivity, its importance as a construct in attachment

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2.6.3 Mind-mindedness and relations with children’s social and emotional development

Meins (1997) proposed that higher levels of maternal mind-mindedness, as well as resulting in greater sensitivity to an infant’s desire and intentions, may also

encourage children to understand themselves and others as mental agents. Research has subsequently found links between mind-mindedness and children’s social and emotional development (Laranjo, Bernier, Meins, & Carlson, 2010; Meins et al., 1998, 2002, 2003).

Meins et al. (1998) argued that levels of maternal mind-mindedness would have an effect on children’s mentalising abilities. Support for this hypothesis was found in mothers’ proclivity to describe their 3-year-old children in mentalistic terms being related to how well these children performed at 4 years on a version of Wimmer and Perner’s (1983) unexpected transfer task which requires the child to represent the mental states of another person in order for them to be able to predict that person’s subsequent behaviour. Also, mothers’ descriptions of their children in mentalistic terms were related to how well the children performed on a more advanced mentalising task when tested again at 5 years.

Further support for this important role of maternal mind-mindedness was found by Meins et al. (2002) when mind-mindedness, specifically mothers’ appropriate mind- related comments in a play session with 6-month-old infants, was found not only to positively correlate with children’s performance on a battery of theory of mind tasks at 45 and 48 months but also to independently predict overall theory of mind performance. Meins et al. (2003) argued that exposure to mind-minded discourse would present children with the opportunity to reflect on their own and other’s ongoing ideation. This was supported when mothers’ appropriate mind-related comments with 6-month old infants was positively associated with children’s stream of consciousness understanding at 55 months.

2.7 Summary

Much research has focused on finding out the mechanism which may account for the development of secure attachment relationships and the transmission of attachment security between generations. Maternal sensitivity, possibly due to the way it came to be operationalised, has proved to have limitations as an antecedent of attachment security. Meins (1997) proposed a new construct, maternal mind- mindedness, to adhere more closely to Ainsworth’s distinction between sensitive

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and insensitive mothering. This focuses on a mother’s willingness to think of and treat her child as a mental agent and came to be operationalised in two ways, using a representational measure and an interactional measure. Both stem from mothers’ representations but only one of these, the interactional measure, is online and allows you to see how representations are used in real-life behaviour.

Subsequently, maternal mind-mindedness has been found to be linked to variables with positive developmental outcomes such as secure attachment relationships and children’s superior mentalising abilities. Maternal mind-mindedness has been found not only to relate to these outcomes concurrently but more importantly to predict them. It appears that mothers with higher levels of mind-mindedness are more likely, later on, to have securely attached infants and children who perform better on mentalising tasks than mothers who demonstrate lower levels of mind-mindedness. These links demonstrate the importance of maternal mind-mindedness but do little to clarify the nature of the construct.

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