7-17-Claire-Banga-Maternal-Mindedness

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8 | Inkblot: The Undergraduate Journal of Psychology • Vol. 1 • September 2012 born infants are evolutionarily pre-wired with certain attachment behaviors whose goal is to seek proximity to and responsiveness from their caregiver, particularly in times of distress (Bowlby, 1982, 1969). One of the most relevant empirical applications of attachment theory to date has been the categorization of attachment styles, whose differentiations were first demonstrated in the Strange Situation Test by researchers Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall (1978). Based on this and other important research, four distinct types of attachment styles emerged: secure, anxious, resistant, and avoidant. A secure attachment style is thought to be the most healthy and adaptive of the four. The pillars of this attachment style are a “sense of attachment security, comfort with closeness and interdependence, and reliance on support seeking and other constructive means of coping with stress” (Mikulincer et al., 2003, p. 79). Therefore, attachment security is associated with constructive rather than maladaptive strategies for coping in situations of high emotional distress (Mikulincer et al., 2003). Although this initial research has been extrapolated many times over and empirical data has served to further delineate various categories and models (e.g., Main & Solomon, 1990), the idea that a secure attachment style is the most favorable and positive of the attachment styles has been firmly established. Thus, a research imperative has developed to find the components that facilitate the formation of a secure attachment style. The idea that attachment styles are transmitted across generations, particularly through mother-child relations, has been widespread and the mechanisms that drive this transmission have been extensively hypothesized, but have yielded mixed results (Shah, Fonagy, & Strathearn, 2010; Fonagy, Steele, Steele, Moran, & Higgitt, 1991). During the original Strange Situation Test studies, Ainsworth et al. (1978) observed that maternal sensitivity is an important precursor in an infant’s development of attachment security with respect to his/her mother. <strong>Maternal</strong> sensitivity, as defined by Ainsworth et al. (1974), is a mother’s capacity to recognize her infant’s cues and to respond to those cues promptly and appropriately. While there is an important causal link between sensitivity and attachment, the association is not as robust as was once thought (van Ijzendoorn, 1995). Thus, the current landscape of research in this field has shifted to a multidimensional approach rather than treating maternal sensitivity as an exclusive causal factor of attachment security (de Wolff & van Ijzendoorn, 1997). One construct that has emerged is that of maternal mental representations termed maternal mind-mindedness (hereafter referred to as MMM). Mind-mindedness, as exhibited by a mother, has traditionally been defined as a mother’s proclivity to treat her children as individuals with minds (Meins & Fernyhough, 1999) as opposed to just individuals whose needs must be catered to. Much of the seminal research advancing the MMM measure as a valid operational construct has been pioneered by Meins and Fernyhough (Meins, 1998; Meins & Fernyhough, 1999; Meins et al., 2003). The construct is gaining both theoretical and empirical ground in other areas of study such as linguistic acquisition (Meins & Fernyhough, 1999), and children’s theory of mind development (Laranjo, Bernier, Meins, & Carlson, 2010). In regards to attachment, it has been proposed that the “clarity of a mother’s representations of her child’s mental states mediates between her state of mind with respect to attachment and her behavior with her child” (Fonagy & Target, 1997, p. 8). The previous point is perhaps further clarified by Laranjo, Bernier, and Meins’ (2008) argument that MMM exerts its influence on maternal sensitivity in the formation of attachment security by facilitating the appropriate interpretations of an infant’s cues through the correct attribution of an infant’s signals. It is not surprising that a positive inter-relation between maternal sensitivity, MMM, and attachment security between a mother and child, has been empirically established (Laranjo et al., 2008).
Inkblot: The Undergraduate Journal of Psychology • Vol. 1 • September 2012 | 9 Given that MMM has been successfully amalgamated into the ever-expanding borders of attachment theory, it is the aim of the proposed study to now take a further step and link MMM back to child coping. Thus far, there has been little effort (if any) by developmental psychologists to do so. As was previously mentioned, MMM enhances a mother’s ability to appropriately interpret her infant’s cues, and thus, respond correctly to these cues. It follows that if a mother is able to appropriately respond to her child’s needs following a negative emotional event, then the child will in turn develop more positive coping strategies. There is empirical data available from research adjacent to child coping that supports this suggestion. In particular, Lok & McMahon (2006) looked at MMM’s relationship to emotional availability. They found that high mind-mindedness was directly related to maternal non-hostility. The rationale behind their findings was that mothers with greater MMM would respond more appropriately to their child. This is put into context when considering that appropriate responsiveness fosters maternal sensitivity. <strong>Maternal</strong> sensitivity is implicated in the development of positive coping strategies; whereas, maternal insensitivity has been linked to negative coping in children, and in particular, to aggression (Alink et al., 2009). While the present study did not research within this same vein, the product of this same appropriate responsiveness was assessed in a measure of child coping. I hypothesize that MMM fosters the development of positive coping strategies in children because this quintessentially cognitive maternal variable is intrinsically related to the mother’s behavior in her interactions with her child. Thus, the objective of this study was two-fold. First, it sought to establish a direct relationship between high MMM and positive coping strategies displayed by children in response to negative affective events. Second, it sought to explore the negative relationship between high MMM and negative coping strategies by children. The theoretical principle behind both hypotheses is that high MMM fosters more appropriate maternal responses, and thus, facilitates the use of positive rather than negative coping strategies by children. Method Participants The participants consisted of ninety-two preschool age children (49 girls and 43 boys) and their mothers. The mean age of the children was 61.5 months (SD = 6.9) (girls with ages ranging from 48 to 74 months, SD = 7.0; and boys with ages ranging from 50 to 73 months, SD = 6.9). The mean age of the mothers was 39.0 years (SD = 4.8, with ages ranging from 22.2 to 47.8 years). The breakdown of the marital status categories was as follows: eighty-four mothers (91%) reported being married or living in a common-law relationship; and 8 mothers (9%) reported being either single, divorced, or separated. In addition, twenty-one mothers (23%) reported having one child; fifty-two mothers (57%) reported having two children; and nineteen mothers (20%) had more than two children. The group of mothers were mostly well-educated: the majority of mothers (54%) reported having completed some form of post-secondary education such as college or university, and an additional 26% reported having completed (or are working towards completing) graduate school. Besides education level, the majority (62%) work full-time. The sample’s cultural diversity was somewhat limited with the majority of mothers (53%) identifying themselves as being of either Anglo-Canadian or British descent. The remaining mothers were from various other cultural backgrounds, including European (18%), Jewish (13%), Asian (8%), and Other/Did not Identify (8%). In addition, most of the sample (73%) was born in North America. Most of the participants (84%) were drawnfrom a list of contacts within an already established research database wherein families who had already consented to be contacted for the purpose of developmental research at the University of Toronto were
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