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Frontiers in Developmental Psychology ·

Volume 4 - 2026 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fdpys.2026.1830812

How infant temperament moderates the association between parental reflective functioning and emotion regulation

  • Karine Gagné1,2,3*corresponding author
  • Maria-Alexandra Craciun1,2,3
  • Jessica Pearson2,4
  • George M. Tarabulsy2,5
  • Annie Bérubé2,3,6
  1. 1School of Psychoeducation, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada
  2. 2University Center for Research on Youth and Families (CRUJeF), Québec, QC, Canada
  3. 3Research and Intervention Group with Vulnerable and Neglected Children (GRIN), Trois-Rivières, QC, Canada
  4. 4Department of Psychoeducation and Social Work, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, QC, Canada
  5. 5School of Psychology, Université Laval, Québec, QC, Canada
  6. 6Department of Psychology and Psychoeducation, Université du Québec en Outaouais, Gatineau, QC, Canada
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Abstract

Early parent–infant interactions are central to infant socioemotional development and unfold within a transactional process in which parents and infants mutually shape each other's experiences. Emerging evidence suggests that infant temperament may influence caregiving experiences, as highly reactive infants are likely to increase challenges, and place demands on parental capacities such as reflective functioning (PRF) and emotion regulation (ER). However, little is known about which specific temperamental factors are involved or how they relate to these capacities. One possible effect is that infant temperament may be associated with differences in PRF, which in turn are linked to parental ER. This study, conducted with 164 parents and their 6–9-month-old infants, examined whether different factors of infant temperament (i.e., positive affectivity/surgency, negative affectivity, and orienting/regulatory capacity) moderate associations between PRF (i.e, prementalizing, certainty, and interest and curiosity) and parental ER difficulties, assessed via self-report questionnaires. Results indicated that infant temperament moderated the PRF–ER association. Higher levels of prementalizing were associated with greater ER difficulties when infants displayed high negative affectivity. Greater parental certainty was linked with lower ER difficulties when infants had low to moderate surgency and regulatory capacity. Higher parental interest and curiosity were associated with greater dysregulation for infants with low surgency. These findings highlight the reciprocal interplay between infant characteristics and parental capacities, suggesting that temperament may amplify or buffer parental regulatory challenges. Understanding these processes sheds light on early relational difficulties and the value of interventions that support caregiving relationships and socioemotional development.

Keywords

1 Introduction

The transition to parenthood during the first year of an infant's life represents a period of profound adjustment, during which parents must respond to rapid developmental changes in their infants while navigating psychological and biological shifts associated with the caregiving role (Bogdan et al., 2022; Middleton et al., 2025; Refaeli et al., 2024). Parents are often confronted with heightened emotional demands, such as infant distress typically expressed through crying and other preverbal cues (Refaeli et al., 2024; Rutherford et al., 2015a). Moreover, they may experience sleep deprivation and face challenges in interpreting their infant's emotional signals as they adapt to parenthood (Refaeli et al., 2024; Rutherford et al., 2015a). This period is often marked by increased stress and may temporarily limit parents' access to personal resources (Middleton et al., 2025; Refaeli et al., 2024; Rutherford et al., 2015a). From a transactional perspective, in which parents and infants mutually influence each other over time, these challenges may further be shaped by infant temperament, which can amplify or buffer caregiving demands (Bates et al., 2019; Davies et al., 2021; Power, 2025; Slagt et al., 2016; Takács et al., 2020). For example, there is much research that suggests that infants' negative affectivity can increase parental stress, potentially challenging parents' capacity for sensitive responding, whereas higher positive affectivity and regulatory skills may facilitate more reciprocal and attuned interactions (Larkin and Otis, 2019; Slagt et al., 2016; Van Den Akker et al., 2022). The cumulative demands of early caregiving, in interaction with infants' temperamental characteristics, may therefore place parents at increased risk for difficulties in their own regulatory abilities, which are important in responding to infant needs and signals (Crandall et al., 2015; Hajal and Paley, 2020; Penner et al., 2024; Rutherford et al., 2015a; Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2022; Zitzmann et al., 2024).

Consistent with this perspective, research highlights the central role of parental emotion regulation not only for parents' own wellbeing, but also for infant socioemotional development and mental health (Crandall et al., 2015; Hajal and Paley, 2020; Morris et al., 2018; Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2022; Zitzmann et al., 2024). Regardless of the parenting context, emotion regulation refers to the ability to monitor, modulate, and respond appropriately to one's emotions, including managing responses in challenging situations, maintaining goal-directed behavior, and coping adaptively with stress (Gross, 1998, 2015). As emphasized by many researchers, adaptive emotion regulation is a complex process involving several interrelated capacities, such as awareness and understanding of one's emotions, acceptance of emotional experiences, inhibition of impulsive behaviors in the context of negative affect, and the flexible use of situational appropriate regulation strategies (Gratz and Roemer, 2004; Zhang et al., 2023). Prior research has demonstrated that effective emotion regulation is a key component of adaptive parenting, shaping parents' experiences and supporting the quality of parent–infant relationships (Hajal and Paley, 2020; Morris et al., 2018; Rutherford et al., 2015a; Zitzmann et al., 2024). Therefore, difficulties in any of these components may lead to dysregulated emotional responses (Gratz and Roemer, 2004).

In the parenting context, emotion regulation involves maintaining an adaptive balance between managing one's own emotions and supporting the infant's regulatory needs (Rutherford et al., 2015a). Parents who are able to maintain emotional balance in such contexts are more likely to support their infant's regulatory capacities and foster attuned parent–infant interactions (Cooke et al., 2019; Crandall et al., 2015; Girme et al., 2021; Lavi et al., 2021; Morris et al., 2018). Accordingly, a central challenge of parenting lies in maintaining one's own emotional balance while attending to infants, especially when infant face emotional regulatory challenges (Morris et al., 2018; Rutherford et al., 2015a).

Among the parental factors that may act as protective mechanisms for parents' emotion regulation in early parenthood, one key factor is the parent's capacity to mentalize, namely, parental reflective functioning (PRF). PRF refers to the parent's ability to understand and interpret both their own and their child's behavior in terms of mental states, such as thoughts, emotions, needs, desires, and intentions (Luyten et al., 2017a; Slade, 2005). It involves reflecting upon and representing both the child's internal experiences and one's own mental states, including the capacity to adopt the infant's perspective and attribute meaning to the child's signals and behaviors. PRF is expressed through different key components, including: (1) prementalizing modes characterized by misattributed interpretations of the child's mental states; (2) recognition of the opacity of mental states, reflecting the understanding that one cannot fully know others' thoughts or feelings (i.e., certainty) (Luyten et al., 2017a,b). An optimal level of this component reflects a balanced and flexible stance toward the child's mental states, rather than excessive certainty about what the child may think or feel; and (3) interest and curiosity in the child's mental states, reflected by the parent's engagement in exploring and understanding the child's inner world (Luyten et al., 2017b). Consequently, parents' capacity to recognize and interpret both their own emotional states and their infant's mental states promotes more effective emotion regulation and enables responses that are attuned and supportive of the child's emerging regulatory capacities (Borelli et al., 2021; Schultheis et al., 2019).

From a theoretical perspective, and supported by growing empirical evidence, mentalizing and emotion regulation are closely interconnected processes (Bryde Christensen et al., 2024; Fonagy et al., 2002; Jurist, 2005; Schultheis et al., 2019; Schwarzer et al., 2021). Two studies address this issue from the context of parenting (Bennett et al., 2023; Schultheis et al., 2019). They showed that greater levels of PRF were associated with parental ability to maintain a reflective stance under stress, thereby facilitating more effective emotion regulation (Bennett et al., 2023; Schultheis et al., 2019). These studies also showed that parents with lower PRF (i.e., those who rely on prementalizing modes) exhibited greater difficulties in emotion regulation, including poor emotional awareness, and reduced impulse control (Bennett et al., 2023; Schultheis et al., 2019). These findings underscore the importance of PRF as a foundation for parental ability to regulate their emotions and respond in an attuned manner to their child's mental and emotional states. By enhancing parents' awareness of both their own and their infant's emotional experiences, PRF may serve as a protective factor, helping maintain balance during periods of infant distress (Bennett et al., 2023; Rutherford et al., 2015b, 2013).

Despite the reciprocal association between PRF and emotion regulation, infant characteristics, such as temperament, may further shape these dynamics (Bailes and Leerkes, 2023; Bennett et al., 2023; Bridgett et al., 2009; Calkins et al., 2024; Kiff et al., 2011). In this context, infant temperament, reflecting biologically based individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation, may influence both the challenges parents face when interacting with their infant and the strategies they use to regulate their own emotions (Bailes and Leerkes, 2023; Calkins et al., 2024; Lengua et al., 2024). Conversely, parents' ability to provide attuned responses to infant cues may support the development of infants' emerging regulatory capacities (Çelebi and Acar, 2024; Howe and Zimmer-Gembeck, 2022; Klein et al., 2018). According to Rothbart's psychobiological model, infant temperamental factors are expressed across three key factors: (1) positive affectivity/surgency, characterized by high activity, approach behaviors, and positive affect; (2) negative affectivity, the tendency to experience distress, fear, or frustration; and (3) orienting/regulatory capacity, reflecting the capacity for attentional focusing, inhibitory control, and emotion regulation (Rothbart, 1981; Rothbart and Bates, 2006). Each dimension of infant temperament may therefore differentially shape parent–infant interactions, as infants who frequently display distress, irritability, or difficulty being soothed may elicit stronger emotional reactions in parents, potentially challenging parents' capacity to maintain a reflective stance and regulate their own emotions effectively (Bates et al., 2019; Bennett et al., 2023; Dalimonte-Merckling and Brophy-Herb, 2019; Lengua et al., 2024).

Recent research adopting a parenting-by-temperament approach has highlighted the bidirectional relationship between parenting experiences and infant temperamental traits, particularly among highly reactive children (e.g., Bailes and Leerkes, 2023; Bates et al., 2019; Bridgett et al., 2009; Calkins et al., 2024; Çelebi and Acar, 2024; Howe and Zimmer-Gembeck, 2022; Kiff et al., 2011; Lengua et al., 2024). To date, only one study has examined the moderating role of child temperament in the association between PRF and parental emotion regulation (Bennett et al., 2023). In this study involving 2,208 parent–child dyads (mean age 4 years), Bennett et al. (2023) found that child negative affectivity moderated this association, such that higher levels of prementalizing modes were linked to greater parental impulse control difficulties only when children displayed moderate to high levels of negative affectivity (Bennett et al., 2023). However, no association was observed when negative affectivity was low (Bennett et al., 2023). This pattern suggests that when children are more emotionally reactive (e.g., frequent distress, irritability, or difficulty soothing), parents' difficulties managing their own emotions are associated with impaired mentalizing processes. By contrast, this association does not emerge when children display low levels of negative affect. These findings indicate that infant temperament may act as a contextual factor, impacting the association between PRF and emotion regulation difficulties.

While this study provided valuable insight into the moderating role of child temperament in the association between PRF and emotion regulation difficulties, its scope is limited by its focus on a single factor (i.e., negative affectivity), leaving the potential moderating effects of other temperamental traits unexplored (i.e., positive affectivity/surgency and orienting/regulatory capacity). Research has highlighted differentiated associations between distinct dimensions of infant temperament and parenting, emphasizing the importance of considering temperament as a multifaceted construct (Bates et al., 2019; Lengua et al., 2024; Shin et al., 2021; You and Bae, 2024). Understanding the specific role of each temperamental factor is therefore important to determine whether and how infant characteristics moderate the associations between PRF and emotion regulation, which is the focus of the present study. Such findings may inform preventive strategies by underscoring that enhancing parents' understanding of their infant's unique temperamental functioning may facilitate parental mentalizing processes, thereby supporting more adaptive emotion regulation.

2 The current study

Grounded in transactional perspective (e.g., Bates et al., 2019; Bridgett et al., 2009; Sameroff, 2009), the present study aimed to examine whether infant temperament factors (i.e., positivity affect/surgency, negative affectivity, orienting/regulatory capacity) moderate the association between PRF and parental emotion regulation difficulties. Specifically, we first investigated associations between PRF subcomponents, (i.e., prementalizing, certainty about mental states, and interest and curiosity) and parental emotion regulation difficulties. Second, we tested infant temperament factors (i.e., positive affectivity/surgency, negative affectivity, and orienting/regulatory capacities) as potential moderators of these associations. Considering the welldocumented role of socioeconomic status, family income, and parental education were included as covariates in all analyses to account for their potential effects (e.g., De France and Evans, 2021; Zitzmann et al., 2024).

We expected that more challenging infant temperamental characteristics (i.e., higher negative affectivity and lower orienting/regulatory capacity) would strengthen the association between lower PRF and greater parental emotion dysregulation. In contrast, temperamental traits reflecting lower negative affectivity and stronger regulatory capacities were expected to attenuate these associations.

3 Method

3.1 Procedure

This study stems from a larger project aimed at examining the factors that shape the parent-child relationship. Data were collected between March 2024 and November 2025. Parents and their infants aged 6–8 months were recruited in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, through flyers posted in local childcare centers, health centers, universities, libraries, and community organizations, as well as through parenting groups on social media. Parents who expressed interest in participating were contacted by a member of the research team and informed about the study objectives and the activities involved in the parent–infant session. They were advised that participation was voluntary, that all information would remain confidential, and that they could withdraw from the study at any time. All participants provided informed consent prior to participation. Participants were compensated with a 40$ gift card after assessment. The research procedure was approved by the University ethics committees (#2023-4969). Parent-infant sessions took place at the research laboratory. Upon arrival, parents first completed a sociodemographic questionnaire and completed self-report measures (see Section 3.3 for details).

3.2 Participants

A total of 164 parents (158 mothers, four fathers, one non-binary parent) and their infants aged 6–9 months (79 girls, 85 boys) participated in the study. All parents were primary caregivers of the infant. Parents' ages ranged from 25 to 45 years, with a mean age of 34.23 years (SD = 3.92). Most parents were born in Canada (73.8%). Among those born outside Canada, families originated from Europe (16.5%), Latin America (2.4%), the Middle East (2.4%), Asia (1.2%), the Caribbean (1.2%), Africa (1.2%), and the United States (1.2%). Parents in this study were generally highly educated, with 84.7% holding a university degree (i.e., bachelor's, master's, or doctorate). Participants were predominantly middle to upper-middle class: 59.8% reported an annual family income of CAD 130,000 or more, 23.2% reported an income between CAD 100,000 and 129,999, and 17.1% reported an income below CAD 100,000.

3.3 Measures

3.3.1 Parental emotion regulation

Parent emotion regulation was assessed using the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz and Roemer, 2004), a widely used 36-items self-report measure of clinically relevant difficulties in emotion regulation. The DERS provides an overall score (DERS total) derived from six subscales assessing distinct facets of emotion regulation difficulties: (1) nonacceptance of emotional responses (e.g., “When I'm upset, I feel ashamed with myself for feeling that way”); (2) difficulties engaging in goal-directed behavior (e.g., “When I'm upset, I have difficulty getting thinking about anything else”); (3) impulse control difficulties (e.g., “When I'm upset, I lose control over my behaviors”); (4) lack of emotional awareness (e.g., “When I'm upset, I take time to figure out what I'm really feeling”, reverse item); (5) limited access to emotion regulation strategies (e.g., “When I'm upset, my emotions feel overwhelming”); and (6) lack of emotional clarity (e.g., “I am confused about how I feel”). Items are rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“almost never”) to 5 (“almost always”). Higher scores indicate greater difficulties in emotion regulation or emotional dysregulation.

In the present study, the overall DERS total score was used to reflect general difficulties in emotion regulation. The DERS has demonstrated strong psychometric properties across clinical and non-clinical populations, including high internal consistency and test–retest reliability (Fowler et al., 2014; Gratz and Roemer, 2004; Hallion et al., 2018). In the current sample, the DERS total showed excellent internal consistency (α = 0.86).

3.3.2 Parental reflective functioning

PRF was measured using the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ; Luyten et al., 2017b), an 18-item self-report measure divided into three subscales: (1) prementalizing modes (PM), which reflects difficulties in recognizing the child's mental states and their influence on behavior (e.g., “The only time I'm certain my child loves me is when he or she is smiling at me”); (2) certainty about mental states (CM), indicating the parent's confidence in understanding the child's mental states (e.g., “I always know what my child wants”); and (3) interest and curiosity (IC), assessing genuine curiosity about the child's thoughts and feelings (e.g., “I wonder a lot about what my child is thinking and feeling”). Parents rate each item on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 7 (“strongly agree”), keeping their child in mind while responding.

Lower PM scores indicate better reflective functioning, whereas higher scores reflect maladaptive, severely impaired reflective functioning, characterized by failed ways of understanding self and others (Luyten et al., 2017b). For CM, mid-level scores are expected to represent optimal PRF, and higher IC scores reflect greater active curiosity and a stronger motivation to understand the child's mental states. The reliability and validity of the PRFQ have been supported in several studies (e.g., De Roo et al., 2019; Luyten et al., 2017b; Wendelboe et al., 2021). In this study, Cronbach's alphas for PM, CM, and IC were 0.67, 0.77, and 0.68, respectively, indicating acceptable internal consistency for all subscales.

3.3.3 Infant temperament

Infants' temperament was assessed using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire–Revised Very Short Form (IBQ-R VSF; Putnam et al., 2014), a parent-report measure of infant temperament. Parents were asked to indicate how often their infant had exhibited each behavior during the past 7 days. Items were rated on a seven-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (“never”) to 7 (“always”), and mean scores were computed for each factor, with higher scores indicating greater expression of the corresponding temperamental trait.

The IBQ-R VSF comprises 37 items organized into three broad temperament factors: (1) positive affectivity/surgency (13 items) captures approach tendencies, vocal reactivity, high-intensity pleasure, smiling and laughter, activity level, and perceptual sensitivity; (2) negative affectivity (12 items) reflects sadness, distress to limitations, and fear, as well as lower falling reactivity; and (3) orienting/regulatory capacity (12 items) indexes regulatory and attentional processes, including duration of orienting, low-intensity pleasure, cuddliness, and soothability (Putnam et al., 2014).

The IBQ-R VSF demonstrates good psychometric properties, including high internal consistency, inter agreement, temporal stability, and evidence of construct validity. Its three-factor structure has been shown to generalize across diverse samples and has been supported by subsequent research, making it a brief yet psychometrically sound measure of broad dimensions of infant temperament (Peterson et al., 2017; Putnam et al., 2014). In the current sample, internal consistency was adequate, with Cronbach's alphas of α = 0.68 for positive affectivity/surgency, α = 0.79 for negative affectivity, and α = 0.62 for orienting/regulatory capacity.

4 Analytic plan

All analyses were conducted in Mplus version 9 (Muthén and Muthén, 2025). Prior to the analyses, a sensitivity power analysis conducted in G*Power indicated that the present sample size (n = 164) provided 80% power to detect small moderation effects f2 = 0.05 at an alpha level of 0.05, suggesting adequate statistical sensitivity for the analyses. Preliminary analyses included inspection of descriptive statistics, distributions, and bivariate correlations among sociodemographic variables (i.e., parental age, infant sex, family income, and parental education), emotion regulation difficulties, PRF subscales, and infant temperament factors. Assumptions for moderation analyses, linearity, normality, multicollinearity, homoscedasticity, and the presence of outliers were also examined. All assumptions for the moderation analyses were met, and no problematic outliers were identified.

Main analyses consisted of separate moderation models for each combination of PRF subcomponents (i.e., prementalizing modes, certainty about mental states, and interest and curiosity) and temperament factors (i.e., positive affectivity/surgency, negative affectivity, and orienting/regulatory capacities). In each model, emotion regulation difficulties was regressed on the PRF subscale, the temperament factor, and their interaction term, controlling for parental education, and family income. Interaction terms were computed as the product of the mean-centered independent variable and moderator. Continuous variables were mean centered to facilitate interpretation and reduce multicollinearity, and missing data were handled using full information maximum likelihood (FIML).

Significant interactions were probed using simple slope analyses at ±1 SD of the moderator mean to clarify the direction and magnitude of moderation effects. This approach allowed us to determine whether more challenging infant temperamental characteristics (e.g., higher negative affectivity or lower orienting/regulatory capacities) amplified associations between lower PRF and greater parental emotion dysregulation, and whether more adaptive characteristics attenuated these associations.

To account for the multiple analyses conducted, a Bayesian estimation approach was adopted to estimate parameter distributions and 95% credible intervals, allowing a probabilistic interpretation of effects in complex interaction models while explicitly accounting for uncertainty in parameter estimates (Li et al., 2023; Posch et al., 2020). This approach was chosen due to the presence of multiple interactions and modest sample sizes, which can limit the reliability of traditional frequentist estimates (Li et al., 2023; Posch et al., 2020). Effects were interpreted based on 95% credible intervals and posterior probabilities. Across all models, parameter estimates and credible intervals were consistent, indicating stable and reliable effects across analyses.

5 Results

5.1 Preliminary analysis

Correlations among sociodemographic variables, parental emotion dysregulation, PRF, and infant temperament factors are presented in Table 1. Parental age was negatively associated with parental interest and curiosity but was not significantly related to other study variables. Infant sex was uniquely associated with infant positive affectivity/surgency and negative emotionality, such that girls showed lower levels on both temperament factors. Parental education was negatively correlated with parental emotion dysregulation, whereas family income was not significantly related to any variable.

Table 1. Correlations among sociodemographic variables, parental emotion dysregulation, parental reflective functioning and infant temperament.

Study Variables12345678910
Sociodemographics
Parents' age
Infant sex (0–1)−0.038
Income0.0380.042
Education−0.0340.042−0.001
DERS
Emotion dysregulation0.0320.0110.020−0.160*
PRF
Prementalizing−0.0120.068−0.140<sup>t</sup>0.0530.357**
Certainty−0.003−0.037−0.143<sup>t</sup>−0.054−0.241**−0.132<sup>t</sup>
Interest and curiosity−0.170*0.022−0.0040.0190.007−0.235**0.050
Temperament
Positive affectivity/ surgency0.009−0.214*−0.0150.0000.029−0.0520.0730.191*
Negative affectivity−0.064−0.172*−0.132<sup>t</sup>−0.0620.1100.060−0.1140.0230.214**
Orienting and regulatory capacities−0.061−0.027−0.0390.039−0.207**−0.159*0.270**0.1100.175*−0.109

***p < 0.001,

**p < 0.01,

*p < 0.05,

tp < 0.09

DERS, difficulties in emotion regulation scale; PRF, parental reflective functioning; Infant sex (0 = boys, 1 = girls).

Parental emotion dysregulation was positively associated with prementalizing modes and negatively associated with certainty about mental states. Regarding infant temperament, infant positive affectivity/surgency was positively correlated with parental interest and curiosity. Lower infant orienting and regulatory capacities were associated with greater parental emotion dysregulation, higher prementalizing modes and less certainty.

5.2 Moderation analysis

Table 2 presents the results of moderation analyses examining the associations between PRF subcomponents [i.e., prementalizing (PM), certainty about mental states (CM), and interest and curiosity (IC)] and parental difficulties in emotion regulation, as well as the moderating role of three infant temperament factors: positive affectivity/surgency, negative affectivity, and orienting/regulatory capacities.

Table 2. Moderating effects of infant temperament on the relationship between parental reflective functioning and parental emotion dysregulation.

PredictorsEmotion dysregulation
PA/SurNegO/R
βSEpβSEpβSEp
Education−0.180*0.0700.010−0.178*0.0690.010−0.175*0.0700.012
Income0.0740.0740.3060.0990.0710.1630.0560.0720.434
Prementalizing modes (PM)0.380*0.0680.0000.383*0.0660.0000.339*0.0700.000
Infant temperament0.0500.0710.4870.1000.0710.157−0.138<sup>t</sup>0.0710.053
Interaction PMxTemper−0.0010.0720.9880.164*0.0700.019−0.0620.0730.398
R20.167***0.199***0.188***
PA/SurNegO/R
βSE*p*βSE*p*βSE*p*
Education−0.1740.0730.017−0.162*0.0730.027−0.163*0.0720.024
Income−0.0330.0750.657−0.0090.0760.908−0.0190.0730.795
Certainty (CM)−0.278*0.0730.000−0.253*0.0740.001−0.217*0.0750.004
Infant temperament0.0540.0740.4610.0440.0780.575−0.157*0.0750.037
Interaction CMxTemper0.149*0.0740.0440.1100.0760.1480.162*0.0720.025
R20.112*0.105**0.134***
PA/SurNegO/R
βSE*p*βSE*p*βSE*p*
Education−0.160*0.0750.033−0.160*0.0760.036−0.150<sup>t</sup>0.0760.050
Income0.0150.0870.8460.0380.0770.6260.0120.0750.878
Interest and curiosity (IC)0.0110.3810.8860.0120.0770.8760.0300.0760.689
Infant temperament0.0120.0780.8820.1000.0770.195−0.204*0.0750.006
Interaction ICxTemper−0.159*0.0760.0350.0550.0780.480−0.0140.0780.853
R20.0520.0400.068

PA/Sur, positive affectivity/surgency; Neg, negative affectivity; O/R, orienting/regulatory capacity.

Consistent with the bivariate analyses, regression results indicated that higher parental prementalizing modes were associated with greater emotion dysregulation, whereas greater parental certainty about mental states was associated with lower levels of dysregulation. Parental interest and curiosity were not significantly related to emotion dysregulation. Among infant temperament factors, only orienting/regulatory capacity was associated with parental emotion dysregulation. Regarding covariates, higher parental education was linked to lower levels of dysregulation.

A significant interaction was found for PM × infant negative affectivity (see Figure 1). Simple slopes analyses indicated that the association between PM and parental emotion dysregulation was significant for infants with high negative affectivity (B = 3.231, SE = 0.604, p < 0.001), moderate at mean levels (B = 2.294, SE = 0.425, p < 0.001), and lower at low levels (B = 1.357, SE = 0.568, p = 0.017). No significant moderation was observed for PM and positive affectivity/surgency or orienting/regulatory capacities. The models explained 16.7%−19.9% of the variance.

Prementalizing × negative affectivity.
Figure 1. Prementalizing × negative affectivity.

For parental certainty, only infant positive affectivity/surgency and orienting/regulatory capacities significantly moderated the association between CM and parental emotion dysregulation (see Figures 2, 3). Simple slopes analyses showed that the association between CM and parental emotion dysregulation was significant (CM × positive affectivity/surgency) for infants with low positive affectivity/surgency (B = −1.468, SE = 0.387, p < 0.001), moderate at mean levels (B = −0.981, SE = 0.266, p < 0.001), and non-significant at high positive affectivity/surgency (B = −0.494, SE = 0.334, p = 0.139). For the association between CM and parental emotion dysregulation was significant (CM × orienting/regulatory capacities) for infants with low regulatory capacities (B = −1.382, SE = 0.391, p < 0.001), moderate at the mean (B = −0.766, SE = 0.270, p = 0.004), and non-significant at high levels of orienting/regulatory capacities (B = −0.151, SE = 0.382, p = 0.693). The models explained 10.5%−13.4% of the variance.

Certainty × positive affectivity/surgency.
Figure 2. Certainty × positive affectivity/surgency.
Certainty × orienting/regulatory capacities.
Figure 3. Certainty × orienting/regulatory capacities.

Finally, for interest and curiosity, only infant positive affectivity/surgency significantly moderated the association between IC and parental emotion dysregulation (IC × positive affectivity/surgency, see Figure 4). Simple slopes analyses indicated that higher parental interest and curiosity was associated with greater dysregulation for infants with low positive affectivity/surgency (B = 2.302, SE = 1.163, p = 0.048), unrelated at moderate levels (B = 0.055, SE = 0.381, p = 0.886), and showed a trend to be significantly associated to lower dysregulation at high positive affectivity/surgency (B = −2.193, SE = 1.130, p = 0.052). Other temperament dimensions did not significantly moderate the association between IC and parental emotion dysregulation. The models accounted for a modest proportion of variance, explaining between 4.0% and 6.8%.

Interest/curiosity × positive affectivity/surgency.
Figure 4. Interest/curiosity × positive affectivity/surgency.

6 Discussion

Based on the idea that parents and infants mutually influence each other, and that infant temperament can shape the parental experience by amplifying or buffering caregiving challenges, this study aimed to examine the moderating role of infant temperament in the association between PRF and parents' emotion regulation difficulties. Hence, we investigated three factors of infant temperament (i.e., positive affectivity/surgency, negative affectivity, and orienting/regulatory capacities) as potential moderators between PRF subcomponents (i.e., prementalizing, certainty about mental states, and interest and curiosity) and parental emotion dysregulation, controlling for parental education and family income. Overall, our findings underscore that distinct infant temperament traits moderated the association between parental mentalizing and emotion dysregulation, consistent with a transactional perspective in which both parental capacities and child characteristics contribute to parental emotional functioning. By considering the three factors of infant temperament and their interplay with central parental components of the parent–infant relationship, this study provides a more nuanced understanding the associations between infant temperament and these parental capacities.

6.1 Parental emotion dysregulation: effects of parental mentalizing and infant regulation

This study initially highlights key aspects of parental mentalizing as well as infant temperament traits that may either intensify or reduce parental emotion regulation difficulties. Prementalizing emerged as a significant correlate of parental emotion dysregulation, which is consistent with previous research (Bennett et al., 2023; Schultheis et al., 2019). In addition, the less confident parents were in interpreting their child's mental states, referring to certainty, the more difficulties they reported in regulating their own emotions. Our results align with those of Bennett et al. (2023), who observed that greater parents' certainty was associated with lower emotional clarity. Considering that empirical research supporting the association between parental mentalizing and parents' own emotion regulation remains scarce (Bennett et al., 2023; Schultheis et al., 2019), despite strong theoretical foundations (Fonagy et al., 2002; Jurist, 2005), the present study adds to the evidence that parental mentalizing may play a central role in parents' emotional regulatory capacities.

With respect to infant temperament, only orienting and regulatory capacities were significantly related to parental emotion dysregulation, indicating that lower infants' regulatory capacities are associated with greater parental difficulties in emotion regulation. This finding is particularly noteworthy, as it suggests that infants' emerging self-regulatory abilities as early as 6–8 months of age may support parents' emotional regulatory functioning. Although prior research has not directly examined links between infants' emotion regulation and parental emotion regulation difficulties, our findings are consistent with studies on related temperament dimensions in older children, namely, effortful control (Bates et al., 2019; Kiff et al., 2011; Planalp and Goldsmith, 2020). These studies suggest that greater child effortful control is linked to lower parental control efforts, and lower self-regulation in infants has also been shown to predict more negative parenting in infancy (Bridgett et al., 2009; Kiff et al., 2011; Planalp and Goldsmith, 2020). Those results suggest that children with stronger regulatory capacities may require less parental guidance to manage their own emotions (Bates et al., 2019), which may thereby facilitate, and allow space for, parents to manage their own emotions. In line with previous research (Bates et al., 2019; Bridgett et al., 2009; Kiff et al., 2011; Planalp and Goldsmith, 2020), our results seem to indicate that early infant regulatory capacities may provide a protective buffer for more vulnerable parents from the first months of life.

6.2 Infant temperament as a moderator: interplay between PRF and parental emotion dysregulation

Consistent with previous research, our findings highlight that the child's emotional reactivity is associated with variations in the relationship between parental mentalizing and emotion regulation difficulties as expected (Bailes and Leerkes, 2023; Bennett et al., 2023; Borelli et al., 2021). Particularly, higher prementalizing modes were associated with greater emotion dysregulation in parents, especially when infants showed high levels of negative affectivity. In contrast, for infants with lower negative affectivity, the link between prementalizing and parental emotion dysregulation appeared less pronounced, suggesting that lower infant emotional reactivity may be associated with fewer parental difficulties in emotion regulation. No significant moderation was found for prementalizing in relation to infant surgency or orienting/regulatory capacities, indicating that this pattern may be more specific to negative reactivity rather than temperament more broadly. These results replicate and extend prior research showing that parental difficulties in understanding their child's mental states are especially challenging in the context of highly negatively reactive infants (Bennett et al., 2023). Clinically, these findings suggest that interventions targeting PRF may be particularly helpful for parents of infants high in negative affectivity, as enhancing the accurate interpretation of the infant's mental states could help parents better manage emotion dysregulation in these more challenging caregiving contexts.

An interesting finding from our study is that parental certainty about their infant's mental states may serve as a protective factor for parental emotion regulation only in interaction with certain temperamental characteristics. For children with lower or moderate surgency (i.e., less positive affect and extraversion) or more limited to moderate orienting and regulatory capacities, higher parental certainty was associated with better parental emotion regulation. However, this association was no longer significant for infants with high surgency or higher orienting and regulatory capacities. These results suggest that parental confidence in understanding their infant's mental states may act as a buffer, helping parents manage their own emotions, only when the child is less expressive or shows greater self-regulation difficulties. Given that high certainty about mental states is generally considered problematic, often associated with hypermentalizing, these findings provide a nuanced perspective by suggesting that parental certainty may not uniformly relate to maladaptive functioning across contexts. Current research on self-reported certainty scores provides mixed evidence regarding its role, with some studies linking high scores to dysfunctional parenting (e.g., intrusiveness; Rostad and Whitaker, 2016) and others linking them to adaptive parenting (e.g., high self-efficacy; De Roo et al., 2019). Our results suggest that, for infants who were less expressive or had more limited self-regulatory capacities, parental certainty may be associated with better emotion regulation.

Surprisingly, parental interest and curiosity about infants' mental states showed differential associations with parental emotion regulation difficulties depending on infant positive affectivity/surgency. Among infants with low surgency, characterized by reduced positive affect and expressivity, higher parental curiosity was associated with greater emotional dysregulation. One possible interpretation is that heightened parental curiosity may reflect a more effortful attempt to infer the child's mental states in the absence of clear emotional cues, which could be associated with increased emotional strain and greater parental dysregulation. In contrast, when infants are highly surgent, parental interest and curiosity may be supported by clearer and more accessible emotional signals, facilitating parental emotion regulation. These findings suggest that parental interest and curiosity may be differentially linked to parental emotion regulation depending on infant surgency, functioning as either a regulatory or dysregulatory process. This interpretation is consistent with mentalization theory emphasizing the context-dependent nature of parental mentalizing (Luyten et al., 2020). As such, mentalizing is considered fundamentally interactive, developing through relationships and continually shaped by the mentalizing abilities of others (Luyten et al., 2020). Although our findings will need to be replicated in future studies and should be considered preliminary given the cross-sectional design, they underscore the potential importance of the relational context in understanding associations between infants' temperament, parental mentalizing, and parents' capacity to regulate their emotions.

6.3 Clinical and practical implications

These findings suggest potential implications for interventions targeting PRF, particularly in relation to prementalizing tendencies among parents of infants with more challenging temperaments. Tailoring interventions to infants' temperamental characteristics and supporting parents' emotional regulation capacities could help promote more attuned parent–infant interactions. Nevertheless, given the cross-sectional design, these implications remain preliminary and should be interpreted with caution.

6.4 Limitations and futures directions

Several limitations should be acknowledged. First, the cross-sectional design precludes causal inference. Longitudinal studies are therefore needed to examine the development of transactional processes over time. Second, reliance on self-report measures may have introduced shared method variance and reporting biases. To enhance validity, the combination of observational and physiological measures would be valuable. Future research could also examine the stability of these associations across developmental stages and in more diverse populations. Cross-cultural factors should also be considered, particularly how parental reflective functioning and parent–infant interactions may vary across cultural norms and caregiving practices. In addition, given the relatively highly educated nature of the present sample and the potential role of verbal competencies in self-reported PRF measures, future research would benefit from examining these processes in more socioeconomically, educationally, and culturally diverse populations (Aival-Naveh et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2025; Stuhrmann et al., 2022). Moreover, the present study assessed global emotion regulation difficulties rather than emotion regulation difficulties specific to the parenting role. Future research would benefit from distinguishing between global and parenting-specific emotion regulation processes, as these constructs may show different associations with PRF and may be differentially related to infant temperament traits. Future research should also consider combining self-report and observational approaches to better capture the context-dependent nature of PRF across different parent–infant interaction contexts. Finally, our sample primarily included mothers, which limits the generalizability of the findings to fathers or family systems. Investigating potential differences and similarities in these processes for fathers would therefore be relevant.

7 Conclusion

This study highlights the nuanced interplay between PRF and infant temperament in relation to parental emotion dysregulation, emphasizing how subtle variations in these interactions may be associated with differences in parents' emotional responses. It extends previous research by providing evidence from early infancy on associations between specific infant temperament traits, PRF, and parental emotion regulation. Taken together, our findings shed light on the transactional nature of early parent–infant interactions and highlight the potential value of tailoring interventions to both parent and infant characteristics to support adaptive emotional functioning.

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Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdpys.2026.1830812/full#supplementary-material

Supplementary material Supplementary material at the source

Footnotes

Edited by: Silvia Perzolli, University of Trento, Italy

Reviewed by: Kivilcim Degirmencioglu, The Pennsylvania State University, United States

Anna Kamza, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland

Statements

Conflict of interest

The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding

The author(s) declared that financial support was received for this work and/or its publication. This research was funded from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) (#430-2023-00482).

Data availability

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics approval

The studies involving humans were approved by Comité d‘éthique de la recherche en éducation et en psychologie (CEREP), Université de Montréal. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent for participation in this study was provided by the participants' legal guardians/next of kin.

Author contributions

KG: Conceptualization, Project administration, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Data curation, Visualization, Formal analysis, Resources. M-AC: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Conceptualization. JP: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. GT: Funding acquisition, Methodology, Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. AB: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing, Funding acquisition, Methodology.

Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank the families and their infants for participating in this study. We also gratefully acknowledge the students who supported data collection, family recruitment, and project coordination throughout the project.

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Citation

Gagné, K., et al. (2026). How infant temperament moderates the association between parental reflective functioning and emotion regulation. Frontiers in Developmental Psychology, Volume 4. https://doi.org/
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Copyright © 2026 Gagné, Craciun, Pearson, Tarabulsy and Bérubé.

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*Correspondence: Karine Gagné

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