Institutionalisation

Question 1

What is Institutionalisation?

Answer 1

Institutionalisation is examining the effect of how being in institutional care can impact a child’s social, cognitive and emotional development. Research into maternal deprivation, carried out by Bowlby, has led to the research into orphans in institutionalised care such as the English and Romanian adoptees study.

Question 2

What was the study?

Answer 2

• Rutter and Sonuga-Barke have led the study of a group of Romanian orphans since the early 1990s. It is called the ‘English and Romanian adoptees’ (ERA) and includes 165 Romanian children who spent their early years at Romanian institutions suffering from its effects.
• From this group of orphans, 111 were adopted before being 2 years old and further 54 by the age of 4.
• The adoptees were tested at regular intervals (at ages 4,6,11,15) to assess physical, social and cognitive development.
• Throughout the study they were compared to a control group of 52 British children adopted in the UK before the age of 6 months.
• The researchers found that at the time of adoption, Romanian orphans lagged behind their British counterparts on all measures of physical, cognitive and social development.

Question 3

What were the effects of institutionalisation?

Answer 3

Physical Underdevelopment: Children in institutional care are usually physically small; research has shown (e.g. Gardner, 1972) that lack of emotional care rather than poor nourishment is the cause.

Cognitive development is also affected by emotional deprivation

Disinhibited Attachment - Disinhibited attachment: a form of insecure attachment where children do not discriminate
between people they choose as attachment figures. Such children will treat near-strangers with i nappropriate familiarity (overfriendliness) and may be attention seeking.

Becoming a poor parent: Harlow showed that monkeys raised with a surrogate mother went on to become poor parents.

Question 4

A03 - Individual Differences

Answer 4

• The effects of institutionalisation differ for different children.
• Some children with apparently the same extent and timing of institutionalization and adoption develop normal emotional, social and cognitive development, whilst others do not.

There are individual differences.

• Rutter speculates that there may be genetic, language differences or a feeling of in some small way being favoured that may underlie resilience.
• Whilst the effects of individual factors are presently speculative, this
  still leaves the validity of such research in question.

Question 5

A03 - Generalisability

Answer 5

• In most of these studies the type of privation, extent and timing of privation, prior experience of neglect and abuse is unknown.
• Hence, the conclusions of such studies may not simply reflect
  the effects of institutionalisation but may lack validity due to extraneous variables.
• Nevertheless, Rutter and Songua Barke adoptees have been followed closely in an ongoing study since their arrival in the UK. This increases the accuracy of operationalising the IV and thus increase the validity of this study.

-Hence, understanding of the effects and factors involved in this particular study is based on strong research.