The significance of parental mentalizing for four-year-old children's solitary pretend play
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The significance of parental mentalizing for four-year-old children's solitary pretend play. / Smith-Nielsen, Johanne; Stuart, Anne Christine; Wendelboe, Katrine Isabella; Egmose, Ida; Roos, Camilla Overbye; Væver, Mette Skovgaard.
I: PLoS ONE, Bind 19, Nr. 1 January, e0297671, 31.01.2024.Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The significance of parental mentalizing for four-year-old children's solitary pretend play
AU - Smith-Nielsen, Johanne
AU - Stuart, Anne Christine
AU - Wendelboe, Katrine Isabella
AU - Egmose, Ida
AU - Roos, Camilla Overbye
AU - Væver, Mette Skovgaard
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 Smith-Nielsen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2024/1/31
Y1 - 2024/1/31
N2 - BackgroundPretend play is a signature behavior of early childhood and is considered to reflect the child’s emerging symbolic function, enabling the interpretation of social signals, language development, and emotion understanding. While theory links parental mentalizing with children’s pretend play, only a few studies have investigated this association. These studies are limited to infancy and early toddlerhood, and child pretend play is assessed during play with an adult (social play). Based on the assumption that child solitary pretend play reflects the child’s ‘baseline’ pretend play ability, in this study, we investigated children’s pretend play at its peak, i.e., during the preschool age, without the facilitation of another player. The overall objective was to investigate if parental mentalizing increases pretend play complexity in children.MethodsThe sample consisted 99 Danish mothers and their 4-year-old children. Employing a cross-sectional design, we hypothesized that parental mental state language, as an indicator of ‘online’ mentalizing during interaction with the child, is a mechanism through which ‘offline’ mentalizing, measured as parental reflective functioning, is associated with child solitary pretend play. Child pretend play complexity was observed and coded with an adapted version of the 12-Step Play Scale. Maternal offline mentalizing was assessed with the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire, and maternal online mentalizing was assessed by coding the mothers’ mental state language during interaction with the child using a modified version of the mind-mindedness coding scheme.ResultsWhile there was no direct effect of maternal offline reflective functioning on child pretend play, online mental state language mediated the link between offline maternal reflective functioning and child pretend play.ConclusionsThese results provide support for the theoretically assumed link between parental mentalizing and children’s capacity for pretend play. Furthermore, our study contributes to the literature on parental mentalization, suggesting that parental mentalizing facilitates child development only if the parent can translate this ability into ’mentalizing in action’.
AB - BackgroundPretend play is a signature behavior of early childhood and is considered to reflect the child’s emerging symbolic function, enabling the interpretation of social signals, language development, and emotion understanding. While theory links parental mentalizing with children’s pretend play, only a few studies have investigated this association. These studies are limited to infancy and early toddlerhood, and child pretend play is assessed during play with an adult (social play). Based on the assumption that child solitary pretend play reflects the child’s ‘baseline’ pretend play ability, in this study, we investigated children’s pretend play at its peak, i.e., during the preschool age, without the facilitation of another player. The overall objective was to investigate if parental mentalizing increases pretend play complexity in children.MethodsThe sample consisted 99 Danish mothers and their 4-year-old children. Employing a cross-sectional design, we hypothesized that parental mental state language, as an indicator of ‘online’ mentalizing during interaction with the child, is a mechanism through which ‘offline’ mentalizing, measured as parental reflective functioning, is associated with child solitary pretend play. Child pretend play complexity was observed and coded with an adapted version of the 12-Step Play Scale. Maternal offline mentalizing was assessed with the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire, and maternal online mentalizing was assessed by coding the mothers’ mental state language during interaction with the child using a modified version of the mind-mindedness coding scheme.ResultsWhile there was no direct effect of maternal offline reflective functioning on child pretend play, online mental state language mediated the link between offline maternal reflective functioning and child pretend play.ConclusionsThese results provide support for the theoretically assumed link between parental mentalizing and children’s capacity for pretend play. Furthermore, our study contributes to the literature on parental mentalization, suggesting that parental mentalizing facilitates child development only if the parent can translate this ability into ’mentalizing in action’.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85183824446&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0297671
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0297671
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 38295066
AN - SCOPUS:85183824446
VL - 19
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
SN - 1932-6203
IS - 1 January
M1 - e0297671
ER -
ID: 389416847