Child mentalization: The relationship with attachment and epistemic trust

Mentalization refers to the human ability to interpret the meaning of other's behavior by << looking at the other from the inside, and seeing themselves from the outside >> (Midgley et al., 2017, p 95). It is a developmental and interpersonal capability strongly influenced by parent-infant intersubjective dynamics and attachment representations. Bateman and Fonagy (2004) underline that child mentalization is developed by parents' interest on child's subjective experience and parents' empathic responses. Moreover, child mentalization is associated with secure attachment and epistemic trust related to social learning and to the exploration of own and other's mind. In this direction, storytelling is a useful instrument to explore this competence in children, interpreted as narrative task on interpersonal interactions. The present research aims to explore mentalization related to autobiographic narratives and to interpersonal storytelling in a sample of non-clinical children. Participants are 75 nonclinical children aged 10 years. They were assessed with the Child Attachment Interview and Roberts-2. Firstly, correlation analyses highlight that the child overall mentalization of autobiographic narrative is associated with a high level of narrative abilities, both in secure and insecure attached children. Secondly, secure, but not insecure attached child's mentalization has shown to be significantly associated with narrative characterized by trustworthy environment. Results were confirmed by regression analyses. In conclusion, children with a good mentalizing ability activate an explicit mentalizing mode, either in the context of personal experience or in general terms. Moreover, secure attachment influences mentalization, but it is also associated to positive expectations and trustfulness to other.