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Question 1

What is separation?

Answer 1

1. Where a chld is away from a caregiver they are attached to,
2. The term is used when it is a relatively short time, just hours or days - not a longer or permanent separation.

Question 2

What is deprivation?

Answer 2

1. The loss of something that is wanted or needed,
2. So, ‘maternal deprivation’ is the loss of the mother or other attachment figure,
3. A more permanent or long-term loss is implied.

Question 3

What is Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis?

Answer 3

1. Deprivation from the main carer during the critical period (first 3 years) will have harmful effects on a child’s emotional, social, intellectual, and even physical development,
2. Long-term effects of deprivation may include separation anxiety. This may lead to problem behaviour and avoiding going to school. Future relationships may be affected by this emotional insecurity. Bowlby’s research showed evidence for this.

Question 4

Bowlby (1944), method?

Answer 4

1. Case studies were completed on the backgrounds of 44 adolescents who had been referred to the clinic where Bowlby worked because they’d been stealing,
2. There was a control group of 44 ‘emotionally disturbed’ adolescents who didn’t steal.

Question 5

Bowlby (1944), results?

Answer 5

1. 17 of the thieves had experienced frequent separations from their motehrs before the age of two, comapred with 2 in the control group,
2. 14 of the thieves were diagnosed as ‘affectionless psychopaths’,
3. 12 of these 14 had experienced separation from their mothers.

Question 6

Bowlby (1944), conclusion?

Answer 6

1. Deprivation of the child from its main carer early in life can have very harmful long-term consequences.

Question 7

Bowlby (1944), evaluation?

Answer 7

1. The results indicate a link between deprivation and criminal behaviour,
2. However, it cannot be said that one causes the other. There may be other factors, e.g. poverty, that caused the criminal behaviour,
3. Although case studies provide a lot of detailed information, the study relied on retrospective data, which may be unreliable.

Question 8

Robertson and Robertson (1968), method?

Answer 8

1. In a naturalistic observation, several children who experienced short separations from their carers were observed and filmed,
2. For example, a boy named John aged around 18 months stayed in a residential nursery for nine days while his mother had another baby.

Question 9

Robertson and Robertson (1968), results?

Answer 9

1. For the first day or two, John protested at being separated from his mother,
2. He then started trying to get attention from the nurses, but they were busy with other children so he gave up trying,
3. After another few days, he began to show signs of detachment - he was more active and content than he had been previously at the nursery,
4. But, when his mother came to collect him, he was reluctant to be affectionate.

Question 10

Robertson and Robertson (1968), conclusion?

Answer 10

1. The short-term separation had very bad effects on John, including possible permanent damage to his attachment with his mother.

Question 11

Robertson and Robertson (1968), evaluation?

Answer 11

1. John’s reaction might not have been due to separation, it could have been down to his new environment or the fact that he was getting much less attention than what he was used to,
2. There will have been little control of variables, and it would be difficult to replicate each individual situation,
3. However, as the study took place in a natural setting, the results will have ecological validity but will be less reliable.

Question 12

Strengths of Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis?

Answer 12

1. Other evidence supports Bowlby’s claims,
2. Goldfarb (1943) found that orphanage children who were socially and maternally deprived were later less intellectually and socially developed.

Question 13

Weaknesses of Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis?

Answer 13

1. The evidence can be criticised,
2. Bowlby linked the thieves’ behaviour to maternal deprivation, but other things were not considered, e.g. whether the poverty they grew up in led them to steal,
3. The children in Goldfarb’s study may have been most harmed by the social deprivation in the orphanage rather than the maternal deprivation.

Question 14

What did Skeels and Dye (1939) find against the Maternal deprivation hypothesis?

Answer 14

1. Found that the consequence of disruption of attachment can be reversed,
2. Found that children who had been socially deprived during their first two years of life quickly improved their IQ scores if they were transferred to a school where they got one-to-one care.

Question 15

Koluchova (1976), findings?

Answer 15

1. Case of twin boys whose mother died soon after they were born,
2. Their father remarried and their stepmother treat them very cruelly,
3. They were often kpet locked in a cellar, had not toys and were beaten,
4. They were found when they were seven with rickets and very little social and intellectual development,
5. They were later adopted and made progress. By adulthood, they had above average intelligence and had normal social relationships.