The Role of Adolescent Mentalizing and Parental Reflective Functioning for Adolescents' Peer Relationships

Given the crucial role peer relationships play for the well-being of adolescents, it is important to understand the factors that support adolescents' ability to form positive relationships with peers. Within early childhood, both children's mentalizing and parents' ability to reason about their children's mental states relate to positive social outcomes; however, markedly less is known about such associations during adolescence. Addressing this gap, the present work examines parental reflective functioning in relation to adolescents' peer relationships, while also exploring whether adolescents' own mentalizing skills may account for such associations.

Through data collection within Canada, pairs of parents/caregivers and adolescents (ages 12-15, N = 87, 44 girls) separately completed a measure of youths' peer relationships (prosocial behaviour and peer problems). Adolescents completed task-based and self-report measures of mentalizing, while parents completed measures of their general mentalizing ability and parental reflective functioning.

Youth with better mentalizing skills (task and/or self-report) reported more positive and fewer negative peer relationships. Parent reflective functioning, but not general mentalizing, was associated with more prosocial behaviours. Parent-youth agreement on peer relationships was highest when both parents and youth reported higher mentalizing skills.

From a theoretical standpoint, findings suggest the important role of parental reflective functioning and youth mentalizing for models of social development. In terms of methodological implications, task and self-report of youth mentalizing were related but differentially predicted peer problems. Practically speaking, findings suggest that bolstering parents reflective functioning may support the development of adolescents' mentalizing skills and positive peer relationships.