Mentalization, Attachment, and Self-narrative

Dolores Rollo's The Narrative in Child Development focuses on the shared reading of a picture book, identifying "a systemic setting" in which "the development of language, literacy, the cognitive, socio-emotional and mentalistic development during the preschool years" would find a context of mutual interaction. Rollo assigns a pivotal role to language, making the hypothesis that an early exposure to stories seems to be positively correlated with both the emotional and cognitive development and the later achievements in reading and writing. In this commentary the focus will be on the much more central role that other factors play in child narrative development. These factors interact with language and determine the child's emotional and cognitive development, predicting success in later effective interactions as well as in narrative development. Rollo offers robust evidence of the contribution that shared reading makes to child development; but it is a later stage following the acquisition of emotional, cognitive and mentalization abilities, which are to be considered in the context of a complex interaction of systems.