3.5: Privation Flashcards
Privation concerns children who have never formed an attachment bond.
Privation is more likely than deprivation to lead to lasting damage, but what?
Privation is more likely than deprivation to lead to lasting damage, but research results are contradictory
Privation concerns children who have never formed an attachment bond.
Privation is more likely than deprivation to lead to lasting damage, but research results are contradictory, how?
Privation is more likely than deprivation to lead to lasting damage, but research results are contradictory, with:
1. Some individuals fully recovering
,while
2. Others make little, if any, improvement
Privation concerns children who have never formed an attachment bond.
Privation is more likely than deprivation to lead to lasting damage, but research results are contradictory, with some individuals fully recovering, while others make little, if any, improvement.
As cases of privation are relatively rare, how are they generally researched?
As cases of privation are relatively rare, they are generally researched through case studies
Freud and Dann (1951) reported on 6 children placed in a Nazi concentration camp, who were orphaned at a few months of age and had formed no maternal attachments.
They were taken at age 3 or 4 to the Bulldog Bank Centre in West Sussex.
They had little language, did not know what to do with toys and were hostile to adults.
They were, however, devoted to each other and refused to be separated.
Very gradually, they became attached to their carers and made rapid developments in physical and intellectual capabilities.
It was not possible to trace all of the children as adults, but those that were traceable made good recoveries and had successful adult relationships, lessening support for Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis
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Koluchova (1972, 1991) reported on identical twins, Andrei and Vanya, whose mother died soon after their birth.
When their father remarried, the stepmother locked them in a cellar for 5 and a half years, giving them regular beatings.
The father was mainly absent from the home, due to his job.
Discovered at age 7, the twins were underdeveloped physically, lacked speech and did not understand the meaning of pictures.
Doctors predicted permanent physical and mental damage.
The boys were given physical therapy and put into a school for children with severe learning difficulties and were then adopted by 2 child-centred sisters.
At age 14, their intellectual, social, emotional and behavioural functioning was near normal.
As adults, both married and had children.
One worked as an instructor and the other was a computer technician.
Both have enjoyed successful adult relationships and are still close to each other
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Curtiss (1977) and Rymer (1993) reported on Genie, a girl denied human interaction, beaten and strapped into a potty seat until she was discovered at age 13.
She could not stand up or speak, spending most of her time spitting.
She received years of therapy and was tested constantly, developing some language abilities and improving her IQ from 38 in 1971 to 74 in 1977.
At 18, she returned to the care of her mother, staying for only a few months before moving to a succession of 6 different foster homes, where she was further abused.
Genie then deteriorated physically and mentally, before going to live in a home for people with learning difficulties
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Evaluation:
1. It may be that the close attachments the Czech twins and the Bulldog Bank children had to each other explain why they made lasting recoveries, while Genie, who had no attachments, made little progress.
However, Moskowitz (1983) reports that the Bulldog Bank children were all individually adopted and never saw each other again and so should have exhibited the effects of disrupted attachment from each other.
- Case studies are usually used to study extreme privation, because it would be unethical or impractical to use most other research methods.
- Case studies are dependent upon retrospective memories that may be selective and even incorrect.
There is no way of knowing fully what happened to these individuals before discovery.
Genie’s mother, for example, often gave conflicting stories of what happened to her daughter. - Bowlby’s viewpoint that the negative effects of maternal deprivation are irreversible seems overstated.
The children whose privation experiences were followed by positive experiences made good recoveries.
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YouTube Child psychology: Koluchova Czech twins
The effects of privation are reversible
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