Effects Of Institutionalisation Flashcards
What is institutional care?
A type of residential, long term care for large groups of children. It is characterised by the same service provided to all children irrespective of their age, gender, abilities, needs and reasons for separation from parents.
What are the effects of institutionalisation?
Poor parenting, physical underdevelopment, disinhibited attachment and intellectual under functioning.
What is poor parenting?
- Just like in Harlow’s study of monkeys raised with a surrogate mother, a study by Quinton et al showed that women in their 20s who were ex- institutional had some difficulties acting as parents.
- They were more likely to have children in care.
What is physical underdevelopment?
Research has shown that children in institutional care are usually physically small and Gardner found that lack of emotional care rather than poor nourishment has lead to what has been called deprivation dwarfism.
What is disinhibited attachment?
- A form of insecure attachment were children do not discriminate between people they choose as attachment figures.
- Such children may show over friendliness towards near - strangers and may be attention seeking.
What is Intellectual under-functioning?
Cognitive development is affected by deprivation.
What is privation?
An infant has never formed an attachment with anyone, Rutter suggested that this would be more damaging than deprivation.
What is the key study for institutionalisation?
Rutter and Sonuga - Barke’s English and Romanian Adoptees.
What is the aim of Rutter and Sonuga - Barke’s study?
To investigate the effects of institutionalisation.
What are the procedures of the ERA study?
- 165 Romanian children spent their early lives in institutions, therefore suffered the effects of institutionalisation.
- Of this group, 111 were adopted before the age of 2.
- A further 54 were adopted by the age of 4.
- Adoptees were tested at regular age intervals of 4,6,11, and 15 to assess their physical, cognitive and social development.
- Info has also been gathered from interviews with parents and teachers.
- All of this progress has been compared with a control group of 52 British children adopted in the UK before the age of 6 months.
What are the findings form the ERA study?
- Romanian orphans progress was behind that of the English adoptees at every age e.g. they were smaller, weighed less and classed as mentally retarded at the age of 2.
- However, by the age of 4 some had caught up to the English adoptees and this was true for almost all of them who had been adopted by the age of 6 months.
What did findings from follow up research suggest?
- Showed that for those adopted after the age of 6 months there were significant deficits such as disinhibited attachment and problems with peer relationships.
- Suggest that the long term affects of institutionalisation may not be so severe if children are adopted by the age of 6 months.
- This gives them a chance to fork attachments with their carers.
What is a strength of longitudinal studies such as that of Rutter?
Without these types of studies we may falsely conclude that there are major effects due to early institutional care, however some studies show that effects disappear over time with the right amount of high quality emotional care.
What possible confounding variables might also have influenced the orphans in Rutter’s study (not just deprivation)?
Other factors within the orphanage/ institution such as physical conditions of the orphanage and lack of cognitive stimulation for the orphans.
