The French version of the reflective functioning questionnaire: Validity data for adolescents and adults and its association with non-suicidal self-injury

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 nonsuicidal 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 Frenchspeaking 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.