Breaking Attachments Flashcards
Define maternal deprivation.
The emotional and intellectual consequence of seperation between a child and their mother.
Define deprivation and state how it is different to seperation.
Occurs when a bond that has been formed is broken and an element of care is taken away. This is different to seperation which is merely when the child is not in the prescence of a primary caregiver. These brief seperations are not significant for deprivation.
Define privation.
The failure to form an attachment.
How can deprivation in the critical period affect a child?
Bowlby thought that deprivation in the critical period could lead to affectionless psychopathy, low IQ or intellectual disability. He thought that this risk could continue up to the age of 5.
What is affectionless psychopathy?
The inablity to experience guilt or emotion.
Describe the effects maternal deprivation can have on intellectual development.
Bowlby believed that if children were deprived of maternal care for too long during the critical period then they would experience delayed intellectual development, which is characterised by abnormally low IQ.
Describe the effects maternal deprivation has on emotional development.
Bowlby identified affectionless psychopathy as the inability to experience guilt or strong emotion towards others. This can prevent a person from fully developing relationships with other people and is associated with criminality. Affectionless psychopaths cannot appreciate the feelings of the victims so lack remorse for their actions.
What study did Bowlby do to find a link between maternal deprivation and criminality?
The 44 thieves study.
Outline the procedure of Bowlby’s 44 thieves study.
- 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing
- They were all interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy and their families were also interviewed to establish whether the children had experienced prolonged seperation at a young child.
- The children were then compared with a control group of 44 non-criminal, but emotionally disturbed young people.
Outline the findings from Bowlby’s 44 thieves study.
Bowlby found that 14/44 of the thieves could be described at affectionless psychopaths and that 12 of these had experienced prolonged seperation in the first 2 years of their life. Only 5 of the remaining 30 thieves had experienced seperation. Only 2 of the control group had experienced prolonged seperation. Bowlby concluded that early seperation caused affectionless psychopathy.
Outline the strengths of Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation.
- Levy (2003) found that seperating baby rats from their mother for as little as a day had a permanent effect on their social development though not other aspects of development. This means that although Bowlby relied on flawed evidence to support the theory of maternal deprivation, there are sources of evidence for his ideas.
Outline the limitations of Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation.
- Bowlby’s 44 thieves study is based on flawed evidence because it was Bowlby himself who carried out both the family interviews and the assessments for affectionless psychopathy. This left him open to bias because he knew in advance which teenagers he expected to show signs of psychopathy. This means that Bowlby’s original sources of evidence for maternal deprivation had serious flaws and would not be taken seriously as evidence nowadays.
- A further limitation is Bowlby’s idea of a critical period. For Bowlby, damage was inevitible if a child had not formed an attachment in the critical period. However Koluchova has research evidence to show that good quality aftercare can prevent most or all of this damage. She reported the case of the Czech Twins who experienced very severe physical and emotional abuse from the age of 18 months until 7 years old. Although they were severely damaged emotionally by their experiences, they recieved excellent care and by their teens they had recovered fully. This means that lasting harm isn’t inevitible, even in the case of severe privation. The critical period is therefore better to be seen as a sensitive period.
Define orphan studies.
These concern children placed in care because their parents cannot look after them. An orphan is a child whose parents have either died or have abandoned them permanently.
Define institutionalisation.
A term for the effects of living in an institutional setting. In such places often very little emotional care is provided.
State the context to the Romanian Orphanages study.
Former president Nicolai Ceaucescu required Romanian women to have 5 children. Many Romanian parents couldn’t afford to keep their children and the children ended up in huge orphanages in very poor conditions. After the 1989 Romanian revolution many of the children were adopted, some by British parents.
Outline the procedure of Rutter’s study.
Rutter (2011) followed a group of Romanian orphans for many years as part of the ERA study. The orphans had been adopted by families in the UK. The aim of the ERA has been to investigate the extent to which good care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions. Physical, emotional and cognitive development were assessed at ages 4, 6, 11, 15 and 22-25. A group of 52 children from the UK who were adopted at the same time were the control group.
Outline the findings of Rutter’s study.
When the children first arrived in the UK, half the adopteess showed signs of delayed intellectual development and the majority were severely malnourished. At age 11 the adopted children showed different rates of recovery that were related to their age of adoption. The mean IQ of children adopted before the age of 6 months was 102, compared with 86 for those who were adopted between 6months and 2 years, and 77 for those adopted after 2 years. These differences remained at 16. Those children adopted after 6 months showed signs of disinhibited attachment with symptoms such as attention-seeking, clingyness and social behaviour that was indiscriminate to all adults.
Outline the procedure of Zeanah’s research.
Zeanah (2005) conducted the Bucharest early intervention project, assessing attachment in 95 Romanian children aged 12-31 months who had spent most of their in institutional care. They were compared to a control grouo of 50 children who had never lived in an institution. Their attachment type was measured using the Strange Situation. In addition carer were asked about unusual social behaviour including clingy, attention-seeking behaviour directed inappropriately at all adults.
Outline the findings of Zeanah’s research.
The researchers found that 74% of the control group were classed as securely attached in the Strange Situation. However only 19% of the institutional group were securely attached. In contrast, the description of disinhibited attachment applied to 44% of institutionalised children as opposed to less than 20% of the control.
What are the effects of instituationalisation?
- Disinhibited attachment, in poor quality institutions a child may have 50 carers but doesn’t spend enough time with any one of them to be able to form a secure attachment.
- Intellectual Disability
Outline the strengths of Romanian orphanage studies.
- Have applications to improve conditions for children growing up outside their family home. Studying the Romanian orphans has improved psychologists understanding of the effects of early institutionalisation and how to prevent the worst of these effects. This has led to improvements in the conditions experienced by looked-after children. Also institutional care is now seen as an undesirable option for foster care or have them adopted instead. This means that children in institutional care have a chance to develop normal attachments and disinhibited attachment is avoided.
- There is a lack of confounding variables. There were many orphan studies before the Romanian orphans became available to study. Many of the children studied in orphanages had experienced varying degrees of trauma and it is difficult to disentangle the effects of neglect, physical abuse and berevement from those of institutional care. However the children from Romanian orphanages had mostly been handed over by loving parents who just couldn’t afford to keep them. This means that the results were much less likely to be confounded by other negative early experiences so there is higher internal validity.
Outline the limitations of the Romanian orphan studies.
There is a current lack of data on adult development. The latest data from the ERA study looked at children in their early to mid 20’s. This means that we don’t currently have the data to answer some of the most interesting questions about the long-term effects of institutionalisation. These questions include the lifetime prevalance of mental health problems and participants success in forming and maintaining adult romantic relationships. It will take a long time to gather this data due to the longitudinal design of the study. This means that it will be some time before we know completely what the long-term effects are for Romanian orphans.
