Attachment - Romanian Orphan Studies

Question 1

What is institutionalisation?

Answer 1

• Institutionalisation refers to the effects of living in an institutional setting (i.e. outside of the family or family home) e.g. hospital, orphanage, where children live for long, continuous periods of time. There is often very little emotional care provided.
• In attachment research, psychologists are interested in the effects of institutional care on children’s attachment and subsequent development
• Institutionalisation results in the child adopting the rules and norms of the institution that can impair functioning.

Question 2

The effects of institutionalisation

Answer 2

• Physical underdevelopment – children in institutional care are usually physically small. Lack of emotional care rather than poor nourishment is the cause of what has been called developmental dwarfism.
• Intellectual underfunctioning/low IQ – children in institutional care often show signs of intellectual disability disorder as identified by Bowlby.
• Disinhibited attachment – a form of insecure attachment where children are equally friendly and affectionate towards people they know well and strangers. They may also be attention-seeking and clingy. It is thought that this is an adaptation to living with multiple caregivers during the sensitive period of attachment formation. In poor quality institutions, a child may have 50 carers, none of whom they see enough to form a secure attachment.

Question 3

The effects of institutionalisation pt2

Answer 3

• Poor parenting – a study by Quinton et al. (1984) compared a group of 50 women who had been reared in institutions (children’s homes) with a control group of 50 women reared at home. When the women were in their 20s, it was found that the ex-institutional women were experiencing extreme difficulties as parents. For example, more of them had children who spent time in care.
• Emotional functioning – children in institutional care sometimes show affectionless psychopathy as identified by Bowlby, and are more likely to have temper tantrums.
• Lack on internal working model – children in institutional care may have difficulty interacting with peers and forming close relationships
• Quasi-autism – children in institutional care sometimes have difficulty understanding the meaning of social contexts and may display obsessional behaviour

Question 4

Differences between institutional and family care

Answer 4

Institutional Care -

• No attachment figure
• Bored
• Not cared for well
• Less sociable and interactions
• Fewer toys

Family Care -

• Strong emotional attachment
• Well stimulated
• Cared for well
• Lots of socialising and interactions
• More toys

Question 5

Orphan Studies

Answer 5

• Orphan studies concern children placed in care. An orphan is a child whose parents have either died or abandoned them.
• A tragic opportunity to study institutionalisation arose in Romania in the 1990s. Former President Nicolai Ceaucescu required Romanian women to have five children. Many Romanian parents could not afford to keep their children and so they ended up in huge orphanages in very poor conditions.
• After the 1989 revolution, many of the children were adopted, some by British parents.

Question 6

Rutter et al - Aim and Procedure

Answer 6

Aim -

• Rutter et al. (1998) studied 111 Romanian orphans adopted before 2 years and found that the sooner the children were adopted, the faster their developmental progress.
• In Rutter’s subsequent research in 2007, he assessed children reared in profoundly depriving institutions in Romania and subsequently adopted into UK families - they acted as a control group

Procedure -

• Institutionally deprived adoptees were compared at 11 years with children who had not experienced institutional deprivation and who had been adopted within the UK before the age of 6 months.
• Parental reports, a modified Strange Situation and investigator ratings of the children’s behaviour were all assessed.

Question 7

Rutter et al (2011) - Results and Issues

Answer 7

Results -

• Results revealed that disinhibited attachment was strongly associated with institutional rearing but there was not a significant increase in relation to duration of institutional deprivation beyond the age of 6 months.
• In contrast only mild disinhibited attachment was more frequent in non-institutionalised adopted children.
• His research is consistent with Bowlby and Harlow
• Caused intellectual disability disorder, physical underdevelopment, disinhibited attachment

Issues -

• Participants in the study were not able to be randomly assigned to conditions - participant variables may affect the results
• RWA – improve lives of children in institutional care

What are the real-world applications?
- Long-term effects may be less severe than previously thought – can recover and maybe it’s slower development rather than irreversible damage

Question 8

Rutter et al (2011) - Conclusions

Answer 8

• The study suggests that the long-term consequences may be less severe than was once thought if children have the opportunity to form attachments. However, when children do not form attachments, then the consequences are likely to be severe.
• It appears that children can recover and it may be slower development rather than irreversible damage.

Question 9

Zeanah et al (2005)

Answer 9

• They assessed attachment in 95 children aged 12-31 months who had spent most of their lives in institutional care (90% on average). They were compared to a control group of 50 children who had never lived in an institution.
• Their attachment type was measured using the Strange Situation. In addition, carers were asked about unusual social behaviour, including clingy, attention-seeking behaviour directed inappropriately at all adults (i.e. disinhibited attachment).
• They found that 74% of the control group came out as securely attached in the Strange Situation. However, only 19% of the institutional group were securely attached, with 65% being classified with disorganised attachment. Disinhibited attachment applied to 44% of institutionalised children compared to less than 20% of the controls.

Question 10

Le Mare and Audet (2006)

Answer 10

• They reported findings from a longitudinal study of 36 Romanian orphans adopted to families in Canada. The dependent variables were physical growth and health.
• The adopted orphans were physically smaller than the matched control group at age four and a half years, but this difference disappeared by 10 and a half years. The same was true for physical health.

Question 11

Evaluation of Orphan Studies - Strengths

Answer 11

1. Studying the Romanian orphans has enhanced our understanding of the effects of institutionalisation. Such results have led to improvements in the way children are cared for. For example, orphanages and children’s homes now avoid having large numbers of caregivers for each child and instead ensure that a much smaller number of people, perhaps only one or two, play a central role for the child. This person is called a key worker. Having a key worker means that the children have the chance to develop normal attachments and helps avoid disinhibited attachment.
   - This suggests that the research has real-world impacts that are positive for the social care sector, and also hold high external and ecological validity

Question 12

Evaluation of Orphan Studies - Weaknesses

Answer 12

1. Many orphan studies involved children who had experienced loss or trauma before they were institutionalised. For example, they may have experience neglect, abuse or bereavement. These children were often traumatised by their experiences and suffered bereavement. It was very hard to observe the effects of institutionalisation in isolation because the children were dealing with multiple factors which functioned as confounding participant variables.
   - This suggests that we cannot be entirely confident with the conclusions of the study, and that there are many variables that could have made this study unique and confound the conclusions
2. It is possible that the conditions were so bad that the results cannot be applied to understanding the impact of better quality institutional care or any situation where children experience deprivation. For example, Romanian orphanages had particularly poor standards of care, especially when it came to forming any relationship with the children, and extremely low levels of intellectual stimulation.
   - This suggests that it lacks some external validity in terms of how easily it can be generalised to all social care systems, but is relevant to our understanding of childcare in Romanian and similar cultures

Question 13

Evaluation of Orphan Studies - Weaknesses cont.

Answer 13

3. The children were not randomly allocated to conditions. The researchers did not interfere with the adoption process, which may mean that the more sociable children were adopted early and so their sociability acted as a confounding variable.
   - This suggests that causation can not be entirely determined by this study, but that a correlation can be made - these confounding variables (undermining variables) affect the conclusions
4. One of the findings from the Romanian study was that at the last assessment, a lower number of children had disinhibited attachment. It may be that the effects of institutionalisation do disappear over time if children have good-quality emotional care. It may be that ex-institutional children need more time than normal to mature sufficiently and learn to cope with relationships.
   - This suggests that the research only weakly supports the effects of institutionalisation, and ignores the idea that the effects may be irreversible or repairable

Question 14

Rutter et al - Detailed procedure of the English and Romanian Adoptee Study (ERA)

Answer 14

• Rutter et al followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain in order to test what extent good care could make up for a poor early experience in institutions
• They had spent early life in Romanian institutions and suffered the institutionalisation effects; 111 were adopted before the age of 2 and the other 54 by the age of 4
• Physical, cognitive and emotional development were assessed at the ages of 4,6,11 and 15, with information also being gathered in interviews with parents and teachers
• A group of 52 children adopted around the same time served as a control group, but these children were adopted before the age of 6 months
• At the time of adoption, the Romanian orphans lagged behind their British counterparts on all measures - they were smaller, weighed less and showed signs of intellectual disability disorder
• By the age of 4, some of the children had caught up with their British counterparts - this was true for almost all of the Romanian children adopted before the age of 6 months

Question 15

Rutter et al - Detailed results of the English and Romanian Adoptee Study (ERA)

Answer 15

• When they first arrived in the UK, half of the adoptees showed signs of intellectual disability disorder and the majority were severely malnourished
• At age 11, the adopted children showed differential rates of recover that were related to their age of adoption - the mean IQ of those adopted before the age of 6 months was 102, compared to 86 for those who were adopted between six months and 2 years and 77 for those adopted after 2 years and these differences remain until the age of 16
• In terms of attachment, there appeared to be a difference in outcome related to whether adoption took place before or after 6 months; those children adopted after they were 6 months old showed signs of disinhibited attachment
• Symptoms include attention-seeking, clinginess and social behaviour directed indiscriminately towards all adults (familiar and strangers) - in contrast, those adopted before the age of 6 months rarely displayed disinhibited attachment