Attachment - Disruption to Attachment

Question 1

Give an outline of Bowlby’s Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis

Answer 1

If an infant was unable to form a ‘warm, intimate and continuous’ relationship with the mother/care-giver then the child would have difficulty forming relationships with others and be at risk of behavioural disorders

Question 2

State the 3 main aspects to Bowlby’s Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis

Answer 2

• Looks at importance of continuous relationships
• Development during the critical period (2 1/2, after 5 children unable to cope with separation)
• Used term ‘maternal’ not mother, monotropy does not have to be the mother.

Question 3

What are the 3 stages to short term separation and who came up with it?

Answer 3

PDD model, Robertson & Robertson:

1. Protest (clinging to parents and fighting others, crying and screaming)
2. Despair (clamer but still upset, may appear withdrawn)
3. Detachment (may engage with others although be wary. Likely to reject care-giver upon return and show anger)

Question 4

Describe the procedure of Bowlby’s 44 thieves study

Answer 4

Selected an opportunity sample of children from the clinic where he worked, 44 being thieves and 44 for other issues. A social worker interviewed a parent to find out about the children’s early experiences

Question 5

What was the IV and DV in Bowlby’s 44 thieves study?

Answer 5

IV: separation / non-separation
DV: thieves / non thieves

Question 6

What kind of experiment was Bowlby’s 44 thieves study?

Answer 6

a natural experiment

Question 7

What were the results from Bowlby’s 44 thieves study?

Answer 7

SEPARATED:
90% were thieves
67% were psychopathic

NOT SEPARATED:
37% were thieves
3% were psychopathic

Question 8

Explain why Bowlby’s 44 thieves study was not a true experiment

Answer 8

He didn’t have full control

He didn’t randomly select his participants

Question 9

What are methodological issues of Bowlby’s 44 thieves study?

Answer 9

• Interview based on self-report
• Extraneous variables due to natural experiment
• Correlational; cannot confirm cause and effect
• Interviewer bias (his theory & experiment, likely to bias results)

Question 10

What is a problem with Bowlby’s 44 thieves study being retrospective?

Answer 10

Unreliable because of memory (e.g might not remember how long they were separated for)
Researcher doesn’t know of other factors that could have contributed to psychopathy

Question 11

What is a positive implication of Bowlby’s Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis?

Answer 11

Prior to Bowlby’s work no attention was payed to children’s emotional needs. His theories changed attitudes and promoted mental well-being as well as physical well-being

Question 12

What is a problem with the support for MDH coming from children in institutions?

Answer 12

May not be maternal deprivation, but other forms of deprivation which effected subsequent development.
Same types of children in institutions; low population validity

Question 13

What did Rutter conclude led to emotional maladjustment in his Isle of Wight study?

Answer 13

Found delinquency was most common in cases where boys had experienced separations due to discord in their families. This showed that family discord rather than separation on its own cause delinquency

Question 14

State a weakness with Bowlby’s MDH?

Answer 14

He didn’t distinguish between deprivation and privation

Question 15

State 2 pieces of research into privation

Answer 15

Genie (Curtiss)
Czech twins (Koluchova)

Question 16

Describe the background of Genie

Answer 16

History of severe isolation, neglect and physical restraint. Kept strapped to a potty and punished if she made a sound by her father

Question 17

In what condition was Genie found?

Answer 17

Found at 13
Appearance of a 6/7 year old
Unsocialised, primitive, hardly human
Didn’t speak and could hardly walk

Question 18

What was Genie’s result after intervention

Answer 18

Never achieved good social adjustments or language

Question 19

What was the background of the Czech twins?

Answer 19

Mother died after giving birth to twin boys. They went to a children’s home for 11 months and stayed with their aunt for 6 months, then their father and stepmother. Here, they were never allowed out the house and were kept in a small, unheated closet. They were discovered at 7

Question 20

In what condition were the Czech twins found?

Answer 20

Could hardly walk and had severe rickets

Fearful of spontaneous speech

Question 21

What was the Czech twin’s result after intervention?

Answer 21

Gains made after hospital and further care. Now adults, well adjusted and cognitively able

Question 22

What were the differences between Genie and the Czech twins?

Answer 22

Background: Genie was kept at the same place for the entirety of her privation, whereas the Czech twins moved to different locations with different carers.
Outcome: The twins finally adjusted in society, but Genie never did

Question 23

Give 3 evaluative points on case studies as a method of investigation

Answer 23

• Ethical issue: Ongoing follow up could be seen as intrusive and some have claimed they are permanently damaged in later life
• Methodological issues: hard to generalise as its based on an individual case
• Useful: In depth studies looking at human behaviour that would otherwise be inaccessible

Question 24

What was the procedure of Hodges and Tizard’s study into long-term effects of privation?

Answer 24

Studied 65 children brought up in a children’s home until they were 4 where they were unable to form attachment with their carers. At 4, 25 of the children were restored to their biological parents, 33 were adopted and 7 returned to children’s home. They were re-visited at 8 and 16, observed through interviews and talking to carers/teachers to assess their attachment behaviours

Question 25

What were the results from Hodges and Tizard’s study?

Answer 25

Almost all of the adoptees and some of the restored children formed close attachments to their parents by age 8 and 16.

Question 26

What were the results from Hodges and Tizard’s study regarding relationships with peers and siblings?

Answer 26

The restored group had worse relationships with siblings than the adoptees.
All 3 groups raised in the institution had difficulties with peer relationships and were more likely to seek attention from adults

Question 27

Describe disinhibited behaviour patterns

Answer 27

Running to adults even if they’re strangers and demand attention in an indiscriminate manner.
Cry when adults left, despite having no attachments with them.

Question 28

What sampling issue is related to longitudinal research?

Answer 28

Participant attrition

People dropping out at different stages of the study, and those who continue may not be a representative group

Question 29

State one methodological and one ethical issue for Hodges and Tizard’s study

Answer 29

• Methodological: The natural experiment means that the researches had no control over where the children went after age 4. This brings up the issue of how this was decided; they may have been differences e.g social skills
• Ethical: Involves extremely sensitive areas of family relationships; need to ensure there was no pressure to continue ect.

Question 30

Name and explain the procedure of a longitudinal study into short and long term effects of privation

Answer 30

Rutter et al
Compared Romanian adoptees (from extremely bad conditions) with UK adoptees.
Looked at behaviour patterns at age 6. Some were followed up at age 11

Question 31

What were the results from Rutter’s study?

Answer 31

Disinhibited behaviour most common in late adopted Romanian children (26%). Rare in UK adoptees (3.8%) and early adopted Romanian children (9%). This suggests that disinhibited attachments are more likely in children who have experienced longer periods in institutions.

Question 32

What did Rutter find when looking at the children at aged 11?

Answer 32

54% of children with marked disinhibited attachments at age 6 still showed this at age 11.

Question 33

State 2 evaluative points about Rutter’s study

Answer 33

1. Participant attrition is an issue in this longitudinal research study
2. It was difficult to obtain information about the quality of care in many of the institutions in Romania (hard to assess the extent of privation in the early environments of the children in the study)

Question 34

State and explain a piece of research contradicting the findings of Rutter et al

Answer 34

Chisholm
Case study of 2 romanian children adopted into a Canadian family after extreme deprivation in an orphanage. He found that the children adapted well to the new family, concluding that there are likely to be individual differences in children’s responses to early privation

Question 35

What are the 4 factors affecting the reversibility of privation?

Answer 35

• Quality of care at institution
• Age when removed from privation/institutionalisation
• Quality of care after privation/institutionalisation
• Later-life experiences

Question 36

Name and describe a study looking at the quality of care at an institution as a factor of reversibility

Answer 36

Dontas et al
Looked at 15 babies between 7 and 9 months (critical period for developing attachments) in a Greek orphanage where each child formed attachments with 1 carer. They adjusted well and showed no signs of disinhibited attachments.

Question 37

Give an example of when age has affected the reversibility of privation

Answer 37

In Rutter et al’s study into Romanian adoptees, the earlier they were adopted the better they tended to make cognitive and emotional developmental progress.

Question 38

What area of development is age particularly important to?

Answer 38

Language

Good language catch up before puberty, much less likely to develop language after 11 or 12

Question 39

Give an example of where the quality of care after privation has affected the reversibility of privation

Answer 39

Hodges and Tizard
Adopted children more strongly attached to their new parents than the restored group. Due to the quality of care provided by the adoptive parents being more attentive.

Question 40

Name and describe a study where the follow up experiences later in life have affected the reversibility of privation

Answer 40

Quinton and Rutter
Compared 2 groups of women in their twenties, half brought up in care, half not, using a matched pairs design.
Care group more likely to have relationship breakdowns, criminal records, and parenting difficulties.
Also differences within care group; those with positive experiences in early adulthood led to different ‘developmental pathways’