The DOI matches its Crossref record; 111 of the 113 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Development and Validation of a Self-Report Measure of Mentalizing: The Reflective Functioning Questionnaire
Open accessAbstract
Reflective functioning or mentalizing is the capacity to interpret both the self and others in terms of internal mental states such as feelings, wishes, goals, desires, and attitudes. This paper is part of a series of papers outlining the development and psychometric features of a new self-report measure, the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ), designed to provide an easy to administer self-report measure of mentalizing. We describe the development and initial validation of the RFQ in three studies. Study 1 focuses on the development of the RFQ, its factor structure and construct validity in a sample of patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Eating Disorder (ED) (n = 108) and normal controls (n = 295). Study 2 aims to replicate these findings in a fresh sample of 129 patients with personality disorder and 281 normal controls. Study 3 addresses the relationship between the RFQ, parental reflective functioning and infant attachment status as assessed with the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) in a sample of 136 community mothers and their infants. In both Study 1 and 2, confirmatory factor analyses yielded two factors assessing Certainty (RFQ_C) and Uncertainty (RFQ_U) about the mental states of self and others. These two factors were relatively distinct, invariant across clinical and non-clinical samples, had satisfactory internal consistency and test-retest stability, and were largely unrelated to demographic features. The scales discriminated between patients and controls, and were significantly and in theoretically predicted ways correlated with measures of empathy, mindfulness and perspective-taking, and with both self-reported and clinician-reported measures of borderline personality features and other indices of maladaptive personality functioning. Furthermore, the RFQ scales were associated with levels of parental reflective functioning, which in turn predicted infant attachment status in the SSP. Overall, this study lends preliminary support for the RFQ as a screening measure of reflective functioning. Further research is needed, however, to investigate in more detail the psychometric qualities of the RFQ.
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“Internal consistency of RFQc and RFQu respectively are α = 0.65 and α = 0.77 in a clinical sample and α = 0.67 and α = 0.63 in a non-clinical sample, respectively [55].”
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“Consistent with state-of-the-art recommendations [55, 56], we limited the number of possible error correlations to a minimum, allowing only error correlations between items that were similar in formulation or meaning (e.”
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“The RFQ_C was, as expected, positively related to other measures of internally based mentalizing, such as the BES and mindfulness as assessed with the MAAS, but was, against expectations, not related to perspective-taking.”
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The mentalizing approach to psychopathology: State of the art and future directions
Luyten, P., Campbell, C., Allison, E., & Fonagy, P. (2020) · Annual Review of Clinical Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-071919-015355 · Cited by 748
“…such impairments and substance abuse, violence, eating disorders, and self-harm, which can all be seen as attempts to regulate, through specific goal-directed behavior, unbearable and unmentalized self-states (Fonagy et al. 2016, Jewell et al. 2016, Suchman et al. 2018, Taubner et al. 2016).”
BackgroundSelf-citationZeegers, M. A. J., Colonnesi, C., Stams, G. J. J. M., & Meins, E. (2017) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/bul0000114 · Cited by 478
“The effect size was calculated from the average association of the three PRFQ subscales (i.e., prementalizing modes, certainty of mental states, and interest and curiosity of in mental states) with infant attachment security.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialDevelopment and validation of a self-report measure of epistemic trust
Campbell, C., Tanzer, M., Saunders, R., Booker, T. L., Allison, E., Li, E. T., O’Dowda, C., Luyten, P., & Fonagy, P. (2021) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0250264 · Cited by 230
“The Reflective Function Questionnaire (RFQ) [29].”
InfluentialSelf-citationThe bodymind model: a platform for studying the mechanisms of change induced by art therapy
Czamanski-Cohen, J., & Weihs, K. L. (2016) · The Arts in Psychotherapy · doi:10.1016/j.aip.2016.08.006 · Cited by 209
The Mentalization Scale (MentS): A Self-Report Measure for the Assessment of Mentalizing Capacity
Dimitrijević, A., Hanak, N., Dimitrijević, A. A., & Marjanović, Z. J. (2017) · Journal of Personality Assessment · doi:10.1080/00223891.2017.1310730 · Cited by 221
“It is only very recently that this gap has been filled by the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ; Badoud et al., 2015; Fonagy et al., 2016).”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Fonagy, P., Luyten, P., Moulton-Perkins, A., Lee, Y.-W., Warren, F., Howard, S., Ghinai, R., Fearon, P., & Lowyck, B.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- University of Surrey (GB)
- KU Leuven (BE)
- Corresponding author
- Fonagy, Peter
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2016-07-08
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- e0158678
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4938585
- OpenAlex
- W2468117220
- Cited by
- 754
- References
- 113
- Citations by year
- 2026: 102 · 2025: 106 · 2024: 112 · 2023: 108 · 2022: 84 · 2021: 95 · 2020: 54 · 2019: 34 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 3
- FWCI
- 39.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Lirias (KU Leuven) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute for Health Research (NF-SI-0514-10157)
- Economic and Social Research Council (RES-060-25-0044)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Disorders and Psychopathology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research
- Keywords
- mentalization, reflective functioning, self-report measure development, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, parental reflective functioning, infant attachment, Strange Situation Procedure, empathy, mindfulness, perspective taking, psychometric validation, factor structure
- MeSH terms
- Female, Humans, Male, Psychometrics, Surveys and Questionnaires, Theory of Mind, Self Report
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