The child's internal working model of the parent as a mechanism linking parental mind-mindedness with the child's processing of relational events: A longitudinal study from infancy to preschool age.

Internal working models (IWMs) are considered key mechanisms linking early parent-child relationships with children's sociocognitive outcomes, yet little research has integrated the roles of the parent and child IWMs in social information processing. We proposed a cascade from parental IWMs of the infant, defined as mind-mindedness (MM), to children's IWMs of parents in toddlerhood to children's memory for relational events at preschool age. In 200 mothers, fathers, and children in the U.S. Midwest (96 girls), parents' appropriate MM (aligned with infant mental state) was coded during interactions at 16 months. At 3 years, children's IWMs were assessed in narratives elicited by story stems. At 4.5 years, we assessed children's memory for key, relationship-themed details and extraneous details for stories depicting a responsive versus unresponsive caregiver. Children remembered responsive stories better than unresponsive ones, consistent with extant evidence that they generally expect caregivers to be responsive. In an innovative extension, we highlight a longitudinal path to individual differences. Parents' appropriate MM at 16 months predicted children's more positive IWMs of parents at 3 years, which predicted better recall for key details of stories depicting a responsive caregiver at 4.5 years, in both mother- and father-child dyads. We bridge research on parent-child relationships and social information processing by identifying parental MM as one critical early relational factor that shapes children's representational and memory systems and by providing novel evidence that children's IWMs function as cognitive filters, selectively enhancing memory for details congruent with their mental representations formed early in development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).