Reflective functioning or mentalizing is the capacity to interpret both the self and others interms of internal mental states such as feelings, wishes, goals, desires, and attitudes. Thispaper is part of a series of papers outlining the development and psychometric features of anew self-report measure, the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ), designed to providean easy to administer self-report measure of mentalizing. We describe the developmentand initial validation of the RFQ in three studies. Study 1 focuses on the developmentof the RFQ, its factor structure and construct validity in a sample of patients with BorderlinePersonality 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 personalitydisorder and 281 normal controls. Study 3 addresses the relationship between theRFQ, parental reflective functioning and infant attachment status as assessed with theStrange 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 twofactors were relatively distinct, invariant across clinical and non-clinical samples, had satisfactoryinternal consistency and test–retest stability, and were largely unrelated to demographicfeatures. The scales discriminated between patients and controls, and weresignificantly and in theoretically predicted ways correlated with measures of empathy, mindfulnessand perspective-taking, and with both self-reported and clinician-reported measuresof 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 preliminarysupport for the RFQ as a screening measure of reflective functioning. Further researchis needed, however, to investigate in more detail the psychometric qualities of the RFQ.
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