Romanian Orphanage Study

Question 1

Institutionalisation:

Answer 1

Term for the effects of living in an institutional setting

Question 2

How did the opportunity to study them arise?

Answer 2

1. Former President Ceaucescu required Romanian women to have 5 children.
2. Many parents could not afford to keep their children and ended up in huge orphanages.
3. After the 1989 revolution may of the children were adopted, some by British parents.

Question 3

Rutter’s ERA (English and Romanian Adoptee) Study: Procedure

Answer 3

1. Followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain to test to what extent good care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions.
2. Physical, cognitive and emotional development has been assessed at ages 4,6,11 and 15 years of age.
3. 52 British children adopted at around the same time have served as a control group.

Question 4

ERA: Findings (Intellectual)

Answer 4

1. When they first arrived in the UK half the adoptees showed signs of delayed intellectual development and the majority were severely undernourished.
2. At 11 the adopted children showed differential rates of recovery that were related to their age of adoption.
3. Mean IQ: for those before 6 months was 102, 86 between 6 months and 2 years and 77 for those adopted after 2 years.
4. These differences remained at age 16 (Beckett).

Question 5

ERA: Findings Attachment

Answer 5

1. Adopted after 6 months showed signs of disinhibited attachment.
2. Symptoms included attention seeking, clinginess and social behaviour directed indiscriminately towards all adults.
3. Those adopted before 6 months rarely displayed DA.

Question 6

Bucharest Early Intervention Project: Procedure

Answer 6

1. Zeanah et al. 2005 assessed attachment in 95 children aged 12-31 months who had spent most of their lives in institutional care (90% on average).
2. Compared to 50 children who had never lived in an institution.
3. Their attachment type was measured using the Strange Situation.
4. Carers were asked about unusual social behaviour including clingy, attention-seeking behaviour directed inappropriately at all adults- DA.

Question 7

BEI: Findings

Answer 7

1. 74% of the control group came out as securely attached in the SS.
2. Only 19% of the institutional group were securely attached, with 65% being classified with disorganised attachment.
3. The description of DA applied to 44% of institutionalised children as opposed to less than 20% of the controls.

Question 8

Effects of Institutionalisation: Disinhibited Attachment

Answer 8

1. They are equally friendly and affectionate towards people they know well or who are strangers they have just met.
2. Highly unusual, most children who are 2 display stranger anxiety.
3. Rutter explained this as an adaptation to living with multiple caregivers during the sensitive period for attachment formation. In Romania, a child may have 50 carers, none of whom they see enough to form a secure attachment.

Question 9

Effects of institutionalisation: Mental Retardation

Answer 9

1. In Rutter’s study most children showed signs of retardation when they arrived in Britain.
2. Most of them adopted before they were 6 months old caught up to the control group, who had never been in an institution by age 4.
3. Like emotional development, damage to intellectual development can be recovered provided adoption takes place before 6 months, the age at which attachments form.

Question 10

E: Real Life Application

Answer 10

1. Enhanced our understanding of the effects of institutionalisation. Led to improvements in how they are cared for (Langton 2006).
2. Orphanages and children’s homes avoid having large number of caregivers for each child and ensure that only one or 2 people play a central role for the child.
3. They are called a key worker. This allows them to form normal attachments and helps avoid disinhibited attachment.

Question 11

E: Fewer extraneous variables than other orphan studies

Answer 11

1. There were many studies before the Romanian orphans became available to study but often these studies involved children who had experienced loss or trauma before they were institutionalisation.
2. These children were often traumatised by their experiences and suffered bereavement.
3. Hard to observe the effects of institutionalisation in isolation because the children were dealing with multiple factors, which functioned as confounding participant variables.
4. The RO study makes it possible to study the effects without these confounding variables, increased internal validity.

Question 12

E: The ROs were not typical

Answer 12

1. Has given useful data, but the conditions were so bad that the results cannot be applied to understanding the impact of better quality institutional care or indeed any situation where a child experiences deprivation.
2. ROs had particularly poor standards of care, especially when it came to forming any relationship with the children, and extremely low levels of intellectual stimulation.
3. The unusual situational variables mean the studies lack generalisability.

Question 13

E: Ethical Issues

Answer 13

1. One of the methodological issues for Rutter’s ERA was that the children were not randomly assigned to conditions.
2. The researchers did not interfere with the adoption process, those who were adopted may have been the more sociable ones, a confounding variable.
3. To control for such variables, the BEI project. Romanian orphans were randomly allocated to institutional care or fostering.
4. This is methodologically better because it removes the confounding variable of which children are chosen by parents, but raises ethical issues.