Psychological Bulletin
Psychological Bulletin
5 years ago

Mind Matters: A Meta-Analysis on Parental Mentalization and Sensitivity as Predictors of Infant-Parent Attachment.

Stams GJM, Zeegers MAJ, Colonnesi C, Meins E
Major developments in attachment research over the past 2 decades have introduced parental mentalization as a predictor of infant-parent attachment security. Parental mentalization is the degree to which parents show frequent, coherent, or appropriate appreciation of their infants' internal states. The present study examined the triangular relations between parental mentalization, parental sensitivity, and attachment security. A total of 20 effect sizes (N = 974) on the relation between parental mentalization and attachment, 82 effect sizes (N = 6,664) on the relation between sensitivity and attachment, and 24 effect sizes (N = 2,029) on the relation between mentalization and sensitivity were subjected to multilevel meta-analyses. The results showed a pooled correlation of r = .30 between parental mentalization and infant attachment security, and rs of .25 for the correlations between sensitivity and attachment security, and between parental mentalization and sensitivity. A meta-analytic structural equation model was performed to examine the combined effects of mentalization and sensitivity as predictors of infant attachment. Together, the predictors explained 12% of the variance in attachment security. After controlling for the effect of sensitivity, the relation between parental mentalization and attachment remained, r = .24; the relation between sensitivity and attachment remained after controlling for parental mentalization, r = .19. Sensitivity also mediated the relation between parental mentalization and attachment security, r = .07, suggesting that mentalization exerts both direct and indirect influences on attachment security. The results imply that parental mentalization should be incorporated into existing models that map the predictors of infant-parent attachment. (PsycINFO Database Record

Publisher URL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28805399

DOI: PubMed:28805399

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.