Parental reflective functioning and preschoolers’ self-regulation in dyads experiencing homelessness: A brief report
Creators: name: Lucke, Cara
name: Masten, Ann
name: Hodges, Hopewell
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology

description: For children and adults alike, self-regulation is not a unified trait but is made up of a constellation of physiological, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive skills, any or all of which may be used at a given time to help a person pursue a goal or meet their needs (Distefano et al., 2021). Around the world, children’s ability to self-regulate is associated with positive outcomes in the face of adversity (Masten et al., 2021). Self-regulation, however, is not innate to a person. It must be learned across development, often through dynamic, reciprocal interactions with others. For children, regulation skills are scaffolded through high-quality, emotionally responsive parenting behaviors (Sroufe et al., 2005). These co-regulatory processes grow in importance amid the multidimensional stress of housing loss, when the threats to caregiver-child synchrony are high and the negative consequences of dysregulation are also elevated (DePasquale &amp; Gunnar, 2020; Masten &amp; Palmer, 2019). Parental reflective functioning (RF) has been proposed — but never evaluated — as a resilience-promoting factor in dyads experiencing homelessness (David et al., 2012). Broadly speaking, caregivers’ tendencies to maintain curiosity and humility about another person’s mental state may help them to respond sensitively to children’s emotions, maintaining positive co-regulation in the face of dyadic and environmental stress. Prior research using the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ) found that greater caregiver RF was associated with a range of positive outcomes in dyads and children, such as attachment security, parents’ emotional availability to their children, and parents’ own skills at emotional awareness and regulation (Luyten et al., 2017; Schultheis et al., 2019). Given the role of parents’ self-regulation and sensitivity in buffering children’s responses to stress, parental RF may be an important, but under-examined, avenue for supporting the resilience of children. However, the role of parents’ RF in the development of children’s self-regulation has not yet been examined in families experiencing homelessness. Caregivers’ RF may benefit young children in several ways. First, these skills may help to reduce caregiving stress and, in doing so, facilitate more sensitive parenting (Rutherford et al., 2013). Second, by supporting effective co-regulation, RF skills may act as a scaffold in the development of children’s autonomous self-regulation skills, a major developmental goal of the preschool years (Herbers et al., 2014). Autonomous self-regulation forms a foundation for social and academic success when children enter school, perhaps especially for those who experience adversity such as in the context of homelessness (Herbers et al., 2011; Masten et al., 2012). In fact, parents’ RF has been associated with children’s ability to regulate negative emotions (Borelli et al., 2021), though this finding has not been replicated in families experiencing homelessness. The current study aims to investigate parental RF as a novel protective factor that can support resilient outcomes in families experiencing homelessness. To do this, we will use data gathered from families residing in an emergency shelter to assess the relationships between caregivers’ RF, caregivers’ subjective experiences of stress, and their preschool children’s adaptive self-regulation skills. The first aim of this study is to examine the association between PRFQ scores and self-reported parenting stress in order to determine whether this established relationship replicates in a sample of families experiencing homelessness (Luyten et al., 2017; Nijssens et al., 2018). The PRFQ scale contains three factors: interest/curiosity about children’s mental states (IC), a belief in one’s ability to be certain about the child’s mental state (CM), and pre-mentalization (PM), which is understood as a limited ability to envision a child having mental states. These factors have been related theoretically and empirically to parenting stress, children’s attachment to caregivers, and parental emotional availability, along with parental emotion regulation capacities (Luyten et al., 2017; Schultheis et al., 2019). We will also use a measure of caregivers’ overall emotional distress to assess the relationships between RF factors and emotional wellbeing. Given the importance of self-regulation skills as a potent protective factor for children facing a range of stressors, including homelessness (Distefano et al., 2021; Masten &amp; Barnes, 2018), the second aim of this study is to assess the associations between caregivers’ self-reported RF and their children’s self-regulation skills. As noted above, self-regulation is not a unified trait but is made up of a diverse set of skills that may be observed to fluctuate as contexts and goals vary. Further, some regulatory skills may be of greater importance under certain types of adversity (e.g., poverty vs. violence; Distefano et al., 2021). To understand the role of caregivers’ RF in children’s self-regulation development, it is essential to examine RF’s relation to multiple domains of children’s regulatory capacities. Of particular interest for these analyses is the RF factor of pre-mentalization (PM), which describes a caregiver’s inability to imagine a child having mental states. Past research has found PM to be related most strongly to parenting-relevant behaviors like attachment anxiety and avoidance (Luyten et al., 2017; Nijssens et al., 2018). Unpublished research using the present dataset found that higher levels of Pre-Mentalization were associated with lower caregiver regulation in emotional tasks and lower caregiver performance on a receptive vocabulary task (Foster et al., 2017). One critical domain of self-regulation is cognitive self-regulation, often called executive functioning (EF). EF includes skills like attentional shifting, cognitive flexibility, and behavioral control that, broadly speaking, each help a person to use top-down processes to override a dominant response in pursuit of a goal (Blair &amp; Raver, 2015). It has been associated with academic success and other resilient outcomes in children experiencing homelessness (Herbers et al., 2012; Masten et al., 2012), possibly because it helps children to take advantage of learning opportunities. We expect that controlling for relevant variables (for example, child age, child gender, caregiver parenting stress, and caregiver receptive vocabulary), children whose parents had lower levels of PM will show more adaptive EF during behavioral tasks. Two tasks will be examined, one assessing inhibitory control (suppression of a dominant reaction) and the other assessing cognitive flexibility (updating behavior using new information). Emotional regulation (ER) is another domain of self-regulation with high relevance to resilient outcomes in the context of homelessness (Labella et al., 2023). ER skills help a person to manage the valence, intensity, and expression of their emotional responses in order to pursue desired goals. Unsurprisingly, these skills are critical for helping children to form positive relationships with prosocial peers and adults, follow social and cultural practices, and learn effectively from opportunities in their environments, such as in school (Blair &amp; Raver, 2015). This study aims to assess the relationship between caregivers’ PM and children’s ability to regulate their emotions towards a desired goal during the transitional preschool years. Three distinct measures of ER will be examined in relation to caregivers’ PM. First, we will assess caregiver reports of children’s emotional-behavioral difficulties, which offer a holistic behavioral assessment of children’s ability to manage their emotions to meet the demands of their environments. Second, we will examine children’s ability to remain determined during a frustrating task, which has clear ecological relevance to success in classroom environments and functioning at home. Finally, we will assess children’s success in managing their negative emotions in light of frustration. Management of negative emotional expression may form the basis for children’s cooperation and conflict management skills as they enter preschool (Calkins et al., 1999), outcomes that are especially relevant amid family housing or income instability.