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The French Version of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire: Validity Data for Adolescents and Adults and Its Association with Non-Suicidal Self-Injury.

Badoud, D; Luyten, P; Fonseca-Pedrero, E; Eliez, S; Fonagy, P; Debbané, M; (2015) The French Version of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire: Validity Data for Adolescents and Adults and Its Association with Non-Suicidal Self-Injury. PLoS One , 10 (12) , Article e0145892. 10.1371/journal.pone.0145892. Green open access

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Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The capacity to understand one's own actions and those of others in terms of cognitive and affective mental states (i.e., reflective functioning or mentalizing) is thought to play a critical role in both typical and atypical development. To date, however, no self-report tool is available for assessing reflective functioning ability in French-speaking samples. The first aim of this study is to investigate the reliability and validity of the reflective functioning questionnaire (RFQ) in French-speaking adolescents and adults. Secondly, we investigate whether low levels of reflective functioning were associated with non-suicidal self-injury. METHODS: 130 adolescents (66 females, Mage = 15.72, SDage = 1.74) and 253 adults (168 females, Mage = 23.10, SDage = 2.56) completed a French translation of the RFQ and a battery of self-reported questionnaires to assess a set of clinical (alexithymia; borderline traits; internalizing and externalizing symptoms) and psychological (empathy; mindfulness) variables. RESULTS: The current results showed configural invariance of the original two-factor structure of the RFQ across French-speaking adolescents and adults and satisfactory reliability and construct validity of the two subscales. Furthermore, we observed that recent episodes of non-suicidal self-injury were associated with lower levels of reflective functioning in the adult, but not in the adolescent, sample. DISCUSSION: The present research has methodological and clinical implications in that it provides the first evidence that the RFQ can be used to reliably assess reflective functioning in French-speaking population. The study further shows that impaired ability to consider mental states that lie behind behaviors might play a role in non-suicidal self-injury, at least in adults.

Type: Article
Title: The French Version of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire: Validity Data for Adolescents and Adults and Its Association with Non-Suicidal Self-Injury.
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0145892
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145892
Language: English
Additional information: © 2015 Badoud et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1473365
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