In biological families, parental reflective functioning (PRF), or the parents’ capacity to envision their child as being motivated by internal mental states, is known to facilitate the development of the child’s theory of mind (ToM). Very few studies have investigated the relation between PRF and ToM in adoptive families, and none have simultaneously investigated the role of pre- and post-adoptive PRF. The present study is the first to examine relations between pre-adoptive reflective functioning (RF), post-adoptive PRF and children’s ToM acquisition in a sample of internationally adopted children and their adoptive parents (48 children; 14 girls and 34 boys). Specifically, we investigated whether the relation between pre-adoptive RF and ToM was mediated by PRF assessed when children were aged 3.5–4 years, and whether these relations were moderated by age at adoption, which served as a proxy for early adversity. Results indicated that none of the PRF dimensions mediated the relation between pre-adoptive RF and ToM. However, pre-adoptive RF and PRF both independently predicted ToM. Moreover, age at adoption moderated these associations, with both pre-adoptive RF and dimensions of PRF assessed at child age 3.5–4 years being related to ToM only in children who were adopted at an older age (≥18 months).

在亲生家庭中，父母的反思功能 (PRF)，或父母将孩子设想为受内部心理状态激励的能力，已知会促进孩子心智理论 (ToM) 的发展。很少有研究调查收养家庭中 PRF 和 ToM 之间的关系，也没有研究同时调查收养前后 PRF 的作用。本研究首次在国际收养儿童及其养父母（48 名儿童；14 名女孩和 34 名男孩）样本中检验收养前反射功能 (RF)、收养后 PRF 和儿童 ToM 习得之间的关系。具体来说，我们调查了收养前 RF 和 ToM 之间的关系是否由 3.5-4 岁儿童评估的 PRF 介导，以及这些关系是否受到收养年龄的影响，收养年龄是早期逆境的代表。结果表明，没有一个 PRF 维度可以调节预收养 RF 和 ToM 之间的关系。然而，pre-adoptive RF 和 PRF 都独立预测了 ToM。此外，收养年龄缓和了这些关联，收养前 RF 和 PRF 的维度在 3.5-4 岁时评估，仅与年龄较大（≥18 个月）收养的儿童的 ToM 相关。