Effects of Institutionalisation

Question 1

What did Rutter make a distinction between?

Answer 1

1. Criticised Bowlby, argued that he was confused with the term of ‘deprivation’. He used it to refer to several things - separation from the mother, loss of the mother, and failure to develop an attachment with the mother,
2. These things are now split into deprivation and privation.

Question 2

What is Rutter’s privation?

Answer 2

Where a child has never had an attachmenet to its mother or caregiver.

Question 3

What is Rutter’s deprivation?

Answer 3

Where an attachment was once formed but is now broken.

Question 4

What did Rutter (1981) claim?

Answer 4

1. That the effects of maternal privation are more likely to be serious than the effects of maternal deprivation.

Question 5

Curtiss (1977), findings?

Answer 5

1. Reported the case of a girl who suffered extreme cruelty from her parents, and never formed any attachments,
2. Her father kept her strapped to a high chair with a potty in the seat for most of her childhood,
3. She was beaten if she made any sounds, and didn’t have the chance to play with toys or with other children,
4. She was finally discovered when she was 13 years old. She was physically underdeveloped and could only speak with animal-like sounds,
5. After a lot of help, she later learnt some language, but her social and intellectual skills never seemed to fully develop.

Question 6

Rutter et al. (2007), method?

Answer 6

1. 111 Romanian orphans who were adopted by British families were compared with a group of 52 UK adoptees and followed over a prolonged period,
2. Some of the orphans were adopted before they were 6 months old and some were older than 6 months. Each child was assessed at ages 4, 6, and 11.

Question 7

Rutter et al. (2007), results?

Answer 7

1. The children who were younger than 6 months when they were adopted had the same level of emotional development as other UK children who were adopted at the same age,
2. However, the Romanian orphans who were older than 6 months at adoption showed signs of insecure attachments and social problems,
3. The UK children who were older than 6 months at adoption didn’t show the same problems.

Question 8

Rutter et al. (2007), conclusion?

Answer 8

1. The effects of privation can be reversed if an attachment starts to form before the age of 6 months,
2. Long-term effects are more permanent if attachment doesn’t start to occur within 6 months,
3. Maternal deprivation on its own doesn’t cause permanent effects because the UK adopted children had been separated but didn’t show any problems.

Question 9

Rutter et al. (2007), evaluation?

Answer 9

1. Results with the older children may be due to a lack of any stimulation in the orphanage,
2. As a longitudinal study, Rutter was able to investigate the children over a long-period of time, meaning the results provide a better insight into the long-term effects of privation,
3. Collected mainly qualitative data which, although detailed, is more difficult to create generalised laws or theories from.

Question 10

Hodges and Trizard (1989), method?

Answer 10

1. Longitudinal study of 65 children who had been placed in a residential nursery before they were four months old,
2. They hadn’t had the opportunity to form close attachments with any of their caregivers,
3. By the age of four, some of the children had returned to their birth mothers, some had been adopted, and some had stayed in the nursery.

Question 11

Hodges and Trizard (1989), results?

Answer 11

1. At 16 years old, the adopted group had strong family relationships, although compared to a control group of children from a ‘normal’ home environment, they had weaker peer relationships,
2. Those who stayed in the nursery or who returned to their mothers showed poorer relationships with family and peers than those who were adopted.

Question 12

Hodges and Trizard (1989), conclusion?

Answer 12

1. Children can recover from early maternal privation if they are in a good quality, loving environment, although their social development may not be as good as children who have never suffered privation.

Question 13

Hodges and Trizard (1989), evaluation?

Answer 13

1. Natural experiment; high ecological validity,
2. Sample quite small and more than 20 childrne couldn’t be found at the end of the study; hard to generalise results,
3. Because lots of institutionalised children are often underfed and malnourished, with a lack of stimulation, it could be these factors that influence their behaviour, rather than the lack of attachment itself.

Question 14

What does the research suggest the effects of disrupted attachments can include?

Answer 14

1. Affectionless psychopathy,
2. Anaclitic depression - involving appetite loss, sleeplessness, and impaired social and intellectual development,
3. Deprivation dwarfism - infants are physically underdeveloped due to emotional deprivation,
4. Delinquency - minor crimes committed by youths,
5. Reduced intelligence - infants don’t develop intellectually as fast as their peers.