Abstract
Maternal mind-mindedness, the belief and tendency to view the child as a mental agent, has been shown to predict parenting behavior. As yet most of the research results were obtained through interviews with mothers, which may not reflect real parent-child interactive behaviors. In addition, the relationship between maternal mind-mindedness and the quality of mother-child interaction behaviors was less studied in a longitudinal manner. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the relations between maternal mind-mindedness and mother-infant interaction quality through observational data at 6 and subsequently at 18 months of infant age. Forty-three mothers were invited to the child lab in the university at the two time points and were asked to play with their infants as they normally would. Observations during the play session were recorded. Maternal mind-mindedness was evaluated by Meins and Fernyhough’s (2015) coding system and the quality of mother-infant interaction was coded according to Mahoney’s (1999) maternal behavior rating scale. The results showed that maternal mind-mindedness at 6 months was positively correlated with the reciprocity, enjoyment, expressiveness, and inventiveness of maternal behaviors. When the infants were 18 months old, maternal mind-mindedness significantly decreased and achievement-oriented increased. Even so, maternal mind-mindedness at 18 months was still positively correlated with several aspects of mother-child interaction behaviors, including sensitivity, enjoyment, emotional expressiveness, inventiveness and warmth. No connections were found between maternal mind-mindedness at the two time points while a further analysis indicated that maternal mind-mindedness was correlated to maternal education level only at 18 months but not at 6 months of age. This study suggested that maternal mind-mindedness was correlated to maternal behaviors, which may change over time and might be learnt. In the future parenting education, promoting maternal tendency to consider their child’s mental states may encourage more adaptive parental behaviors.