Attachment: Romanian orphan studies: Effects of institutionalisation Flashcards
What is institutionalisation?
The effects of institutional care. The term can be applied widely to the effects of an institution but our concern focuses specifically on how time spent in an institution such as an orphanage can affect the development of children. The possible effects include social, mental and physical underdevelopment. Some of these effects are irreversible.
What was Rutter and Songua - Bark’s aim?
To investigate the effects of institutionalisation in Romanian children who spent their early lives in Romanian orphanages.
What was the procedure of the key study?
The study included 165 Romanian children who spent their early lives in institutions. 111 adopted before 2.5 years. 54 were adopted by the age of 4. Their progress was compared to a control group of 52 British counterparts in the UK. Before the age of 6 months, they were adopted. They were assessed on their physical, cognitive and social development.
What were the findings of the key study?
They lagged behind on all measures of physical, cognitive and social development. They were smaller, weighed less and were classified as retarded. Those who remained in institutions longer than 6 months has significant deficits.
What are the 4 effects of institutionalisation?
- Physical underdevelopment
- Intellectually under functioning
- Disinhibited attachment
- Poor parenting
What is physical underdevelopment in institutionalisation?
Children in institutional care are usually physically small: research is shown that lack of emotional care rather than punishment is a cause of what has been called deprivation dwarfism.
What is intellectually under-functioning in institutionalisation?
Cognitive development is also affected by emotional deprivation.
What are disinhibited attachments in institutionalisation?
A form of insecure attachment where children do not discriminate between people they choose as attachment figures. Such as children will treat in a strangers with inappropriate familiarity and may be attention seeking.
What is Poor parenting in institutionalisation?
Harlow showed that monkeys raised with a surrogate mother went on to become poor parents. This is supported in a study by Quinton et al (1984) who compared a group of 50 women who had been reared in institutions with the control group of 50 women reared at home. When the woman was in their 20s it was found that the ex-institutional women were finding it extremely difficult acting as parents.
A03: Institutionalisation
+ Real life application
+ Value of longitudinal studies
- Deprivation is only one factor
- Individual differences
A03: Real life application
The research into institutionalisation can be applied to improving the lives of children placed in such care. The early research by Bowlby and Robertson change the way that children were looked after in hospitals. Research points out specifically the importance of adoption. In the past, mothers who were going to give a baby up for adoption were encouraged to nurse the baby for a significant period of time. By the time the baby was adopted the sensitive period for attachment may have passed, making it difficult to form secure attachments with a new mother. The result has been that most babies are adopted within the first weeks of birth and research shows that adoptive mothers and children were just as securely attached as non-adoptive families.
A03: Value of longitudinal studies
The strength of the studies reviewed on the spread is that they follow the lives of children over many years. Such longitudinal studies take a long time, which means a lot of planning on waiting for results, but the benefits of large. Without such studies, we may mistakingly conclude that there are major effects due to early institutional care, where some of these studies show that the effects may disappear after sufficient time and with suitable high-quality care. This research taken together with the consideration of individual differences shows that is wrongly to assume that institutionalisation inevitably causes negative effects.
A03: Deprivation is only one factor
A limitation of this research is that inevitably there are confounding variables. The Romanian orphans were faced with much more than emotional deprivation. The physical conditions were appalling, and this impacted their health. The lack of cognitive stimulation would also affect their development. It is also the case that, for many institutionalised children, poor care in infancy is followed by poor subsequent care, such as living in poverty, parental disharmony and so on. This means that it is likely that the face of institutional care goes beyond emotional deprivation.
A03: Individual differences
It may not be true that all children who experience institutionalisation are unable to recover. Research shows that some children are not strongly affected as others. Rutter has suggested that it might be that some of the children receive special attention in the institution, perhaps because they smiled more, and this might have enabled them to cope better. Bowlby’s study also shows that individual differences matter. This means that it’s not possible to conclude that institutionalisation inevitably leads to an inability to form attachments
