Costantini Alessandro, Coppola Gabrielle, Fasolo Mirco, Cassibba Rosalinda
Department of Political Sciences, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy.
Department of Education, Psychology, Communication, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy.
Infant Behav Dev. 2017 Nov;49:322-329. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2017.10.006. Epub 2017 Nov 2.
Maternal mind-mindedness has been shown to be a powerful predictor of many developmental outcomes and to buffer the impact of psychosocial risk conditions, but no study has investigated whether this parental feature might support child development in the presence of biological risk, such as preterm birth. The present study addresses this gap, by investigating whether early maternal mind-mindedness contributes to the growth of a child's linguistic abilities in the following two years of life, and if the contribution of this maternal feature might be stronger in the presence of preterm birth. Forty mother-child dyads (twenty with a preterm infant) were followed longitudinally, with maternal mind-mindedness assessed at 14 months of age and child's expressive linguistic abilities at 24 and 36 months through observational measures. Multilevel models showed that linguistic abilities increased from 24 to 36 months of age, but that this increase was stronger in full-term infants. Maternal mind-mindedness also contributed to this growth, playing a stronger role in preterm infants than in full-term infants. Altogether, these findings contribute more deeply to the understanding of language development in preterm infants and of the joint contribution made by biological risk and environmental factors; from a practical standpoint, they suggest the importance of addressing mother's mind-mindedness in order to support child's language development.
母亲的心理敏锐度已被证明是许多发育结果的有力预测指标，并且能够缓冲心理社会风险状况的影响，但尚无研究调查这种父母特征在存在生物风险（如早产）的情况下是否可能支持儿童发育。本研究通过调查早期母亲的心理敏锐度是否有助于儿童在接下来两年的语言能力发展，以及在早产情况下这种母亲特征的作用是否更强，来填补这一空白。对40对母婴（其中20对婴儿为早产儿）进行了纵向跟踪，在婴儿14个月大时评估母亲的心理敏锐度，并通过观察性测量在24个月和36个月时评估儿童的表达性语言能力。多层次模型显示，语言能力在24个月至36个月之间有所提高，但这种提高在足月儿中更为明显。母亲的心理敏锐度也对这种增长有贡献，在早产儿中比在足月儿中发挥着更强的作用。总之，这些发现更深入地有助于理解早产儿的语言发展以及生物风险和环境因素的共同作用；从实际角度来看，它们表明了关注母亲心理敏锐度以支持儿童语言发展的重要性。
