Effects of Institutionalisation (AO1)

Question 1

What does Institutionalisation mean?

Answer 1

refers to the behaviour patterns of children who have been raised in institutions like orphanages

in institutions children may have relationships with a variety of staff but they may lack the one-to-one attachment in the way a child raised in a family would usually have

Question 2

What are the 4 main Effects of Institutionalisation?

Answer 2

physical underdevelopment
intellectual underfunctioning
disinhibited attachment
poor parenting

Question 3

What is Physical Underdevelopment?

Answer 3

• despite satisfactory nourishment, children who have a lack of emotional care maybe physically under-developed
• the production of growth hormones are affected by severe emotional disturbances which may cause a lack of growth
• e.g. feral child Genie was very physically under-developed

Question 4

What is Disinhibited Attachment?

Answer 4

• children who have been institutionalised often show a disinhibited attachment
• this is a form of insecure attachment where children do not discriminate between people, treating strangers with inappropriate familiarity
• this may be due to seeing so many carers (e.g. 50 carers)
• the Bucharest Early Intervention project used the SS on 95 children in institutional care vs. a control group
• 44% of institutionalised children had disinhibited attachment compared to only 20% of controls

Question 5

What is Intellectual Underfunctioning?

Answer 5

• institutionalisation causes a lack of intellectual & cognitive skills
• they have lower IQ in tests
• e.g. Skodak + Skeels found institutionalised children score poorly on IQ tests, but this can improve by 30 points if children are given emotional care

Question 6

What is Poor Parenting?

Answer 6

• their parenting in later life will be poorer
• e.g. Bowlby’s (ASCMIC) internal working model as don’t have mental template of how to be a parent
• • monkeys w wire monkey in Harlow’s study were poor parents due to a lack of contact comfort in childhood

Question 7

What Study was conducted and by Who to investigate the effects of institutionalisation?

Answer 7

Rutter et al’s (2007) Romanian Orphans Study

Question 8

What was the Aim of Rutter’s orphans study?

Answer 8

to investigate the effects of institutionalisation on intellectual development and attachment types

Question 9

What was the Procedure of Rutter’s orphans study?

Answer 9

• longitudinal study
• 165 Romanian children adopted by British families at different ages, 3 groups
• these groups were compared with 52 british children adopted at the same age
• assessed at various ages on stranger anxiety and friendships

Question 10

What were the ages of the 3 groups of Romanian orphans?
+
how many?

Answer 10

Group 1: before 6 months (58)

Group 2: between 6 months - 2 years old (59)

Group 3: between 2 - 4 years old (48)

Question 11

What ages were the orphans assessed?

Answer 11

4, 6, 11 and 15 years old

Question 12

How were the orphans assessed?

Answer 12

• reports from home
• observations at home
• teacher and parent reports

Question 13

What were the findings of Rutter’s orphans study?

Answer 13

when first arrived in the UK, 1/2 showed signs of low IQ and physical underdevelopment

at age 11:
< 6 months = mean IQ of 102
6 months - 2 years = “ 86
2 - 14 years = “ 77

• Group 2 & 3 had disinhibited attachment + problems forming peer relationships