Silletti Fabiola, Coppola Gabrielle, Colonnesi Cristina, Licata-Dandel Maria, Aureli Tiziana, Sodian Beate
Department of Education, Psychology, Communication, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy.
Research Institute of Child Development and Education, Developmental Psychopathology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Infancy. 2025 May-Jun;30(3):e70021. doi: 10.1111/infa.70021.
Cross-cultural research on maternal mind-mindedness- the proclivity to view the child as a mental agent-can enhance our understanding of caregiving determinants and children's social-cognitive variations across cultures. However, cross-cultural studies on mind-mindedness remain limited. To address this gap, we examined mothers' use of appropriate (AMRCs) and non-attuned (NAMRCs) mind-related comments in Italy (N = 88), Germany (N = 64), and the Netherlands (N = 97) with their 12-month-old infants (N = 249; 133 girls and 116 boys). Cluster analysis revealed three maternal profiles: low use of both AMRCs and NAMRCs, high use of both AMRCs and NAMRCs, and high AMRCs with low NAMRCs. Almost half of the German mothers belonged to the first profile, most Italian mothers to the second, and Dutch mothers were equally distributed across the three. These findings highlight, for the first time, cultural influences on maternal mind-mindedness within Western countries and emphasize the need to move beyond a simplistic West-East comparison, recognizing that cultural differences can be observed even within similar contexts, and call for culturally sensitive psychoeducational interventions to enhance caregivers' mentalizing skills.
关于母亲的心理关注（即将孩子视为有心理活动的个体的倾向）的跨文化研究，能够增进我们对不同文化中育儿决定因素以及儿童社会认知差异的理解。然而，关于心理关注的跨文化研究仍然有限。为了填补这一空白，我们考察了意大利（N = 88）、德国（N = 64）和荷兰（N = 97）的母亲们对其12个月大婴儿（N = 249；133名女孩和116名男孩）使用恰当的（AMRCs）和不匹配的（NAMRCs）与心理相关评论的情况。聚类分析揭示了三种母亲类型：AMRCs和NAMRCs使用频率都低、AMRCs和NAMRCs使用频率都高，以及AMRCs使用频率高而NAMRCs使用频率低。几乎一半的德国母亲属于第一种类型，大多数意大利母亲属于第二种，而荷兰母亲在这三种类型中分布较为平均。这些发现首次凸显了西方国家内部文化对母亲心理关注的影响，强调需要超越简单的东西方比较，认识到即使在相似背景下也能观察到文化差异，并呼吁开展具有文化敏感性的心理教育干预措施，以提高照顾者的心理化技能。
