attachment -> romanian orphan studies: institutionalisation Flashcards
(22 cards)
What event in Romania allowed psychologists to study the effects of institutionalisation?
- The unveiling political events of the 1990s
- Under dictatorship (communist rule), abortion was banned and people were denied access to contraception at a time of severe food shortages
What happened to many newborn Romanians?
They were abandoned, leaving thousands to suffer at under-funded, state-run orphanages
- At the end of this thirty years regime, more than 100,000 children were reported to be in 600 state-operated orphanages
What is institutionalisation?
A term for the effects of living in an institutional setting for long, continuous periods of time
What are the conditions of institutions and the impact of this?
There is often little emotional care provided which has consequences on children’s attachment and subsequent development
Who did research into institutionalisation?
Rutter and Songua-Barke (2010)
What was the aim of Rutter et.al’s study?
To examine the long-term effects of institutionalisation in a longitudinal study, beginning in the early 1990s, called the ERA
What was the procedure of Rutter et.al’s research?
- 165 Romanian orphans formed the experimental group
- 111 of these children were adopted before the age of two, while the remaining 54 were adopted by the age of four
- They were compared to a control group of 52 British children, who were adopted before they were six months old
- The social, cognitive and physical development of all infants were examined at regular intervals (age 4,6,11 and 15) and interviews were conducted with adoptive parents and teachers
What were the findings of Rutter et.al’s study?
- At point of adoption, Romanian orphans showed delayed development on all elements of social, cognitive and physical progress
- Almost all the Romanian orphan who were adopted before age of six months caught up on these measures of development
- More likely to experience difficulties with making or maintaining peer relationships and were often categorised as having disinhibited attachment disorder
- The mean IQ of those children adopted before the age of six months was 102, compared with 86 for those adopted between 6 months and two years and 77 for those adopted
What is disinhibited attachment?
- Rutter (2006) explained it as an adaptation to living with multiple caregivers during the sensitive period of attachment formation
What are the symptoms of disinihibited attachment?
- Being equally friendly and affectionate towards familiar people and stranger
- attention-seeking, clinginess, social behaviour directed indiscriminately towards all adults, both familiar and unfamiliar
What are the conclusions of Rutter’s results?
Institutionalisation can have severe long-term effects on development, especially if children are not provided with adequate emotional care giving
Who did research into the Bucharest Early Intervention Project?
Zeenah et.al (2005)
What was the aim of Zeenah et.al’s study?
To investigate attachment type of children who had spent most of their life in institutional care
What was the procedure of Zeenah et.al’s study?
- 95 Romanian children aged 12-31 months who had spent most of their life in institutional care (90% on average
- Compared to a control group of 50 children who had never lived in an institution
- Attachment type measured using the Strange Situation
- Carers were also asked about unusual social behaviour (symptoms of disinihibited attachment)
What were the findings of Zeenah et.al’s study?
- Found that almost 3/4 of the control group were classified as being securely attached to their caregivers
- Less than 1/5 of infants from the experimental group, who had spent most of their life in institutional care, were deemed to have a secure attachment
- In fact, almost two thirds of these infants (65%) appeared to have a disinhibited attachment
What were the conclusions of Zeenah et.al’s study?
Infants who spend their early years in institutional care, with the absence of a primary attachment figure to provide consistent and sensitive emotional caregiving, are less likely to develop a secure attachment and a far more likely to experience a disinihibited attachment
What are the effects of institutionalisation?
- Disinhibited attachment
- Intellectual disability
How can damage to intellectual development as a result of institutionalisation be recovered?
Provided adoption takes place before the age of six months - the age at which attachments form
Evaluation: real life application -> strength
- Real life application to social services
- Their study helped change the way that children are looked after, especially when it comes to the adoption process
- Improved psychologist’s understanding of effects of early institutional care and how to prevent the worst of these effects
- Led to improvements in the conditions experienced by looked-after children, i.e. children growing up in the care system
- Historically, mothers were encouraged to keep their babies for a substantial period by which time the critical period for attachment formation may have passed
- Nowadays, infants are adopted as early as one-week old and Singer et.al (1985) states that children are as securely attached o their adoptive mothers as biologically related families
- Demonstrates benefit if institutionalisation research to help improve the lives of children
Evaluation: Ethical issues - social sensitivity -> limitation
- Results show that late-adopted children typically have poor developmental outcomes
- Results have been published while the children are growing up, meaning that parents, teachers and anyone else they knew might have lowered their expectations and treated the adopted children differently
- Might even have created a self-fulfilling prophecy
- On the other hand, much has been learned from the Romanian orphan studies that might benefit future institutionalised or potentially institutionalised children
Evaluation: Fewer confounding variables -> strength
- Difficult to study many previous children orphan studies as the children may have experienced varying degrees of trauma, and it is difficult to disentangle the effects of neglect, physical abuse and bereavement from those in institutional care
- However, children from Romanian orphan studies had been handed over by loving parents who couldn’t afford them
- This means results much less likely to be confounded by their previous negative experiences
- Higher internal validity
Counterpoint: issues of generalisation/confounding
- Might have introduced different confounding variables
- Conditions of care wewre so dire for the Romanian orphans so they can not be considered typical
- Quality of care was very poor, with children receiving very little intellectual support or comfort
- Stands to reason that results obtained from studying the Romanian institutions do not represent all siotuations where children are placed in care and experience deprivation
- Lack of external validity as a result of the unsuaul situational variables due to harsh political regimes at the time
- Harmful effects seen in studies of Romanian orphans may represent the effects of poor institutional care rather than institutional care itself.
