Lecture 7 - Studies of extreme privation Flashcards
What is deprivation?
When a child has formed an important attachment but is then separated from the major attachment figure
What are the effects of deprivation according to MDH?
- struggle with future relationships
- low iq
- affcetionless psychopathy
- likely to have mental illness
- prone ot delinquency
What can separate young children from their attachment figures ?
work, illness, divorce, death
what was Bowlbys hypothesis called?
Maternal deprivation hypothesis
what are the long term effects of seperation?
Separation anxiety
Psychological Problems
Deprivation Dwarfism
what is Deprivation Dwarfism?
not getting the right nutrients from food and physically not developing appropriately
what factors affect deprivation?
Age- 7-8 months most distressed.
Gender- boys more distressed
Quality - child to staff ratio (large=anxiety)
previous experience
what did Robertson & Robertson say?
Familiarised child with new surroundings before separation
Provided similar daily routine
Discussed child’s mother with them
what is privation ?
never foreign a primary attachment figure
what did Curtiss (1989) study?
Genie; Extreme privation & abuse-locked in cellar, strapped to bed at night and to a potty during the day. No social contact with anyone. Found at age 13!
Intense rehabilitative effort-Curtiss tried to teach Genie to speak and to interact socially.
Limited success – some attachments, some language
what were the issues with Curtis’s case?
Possibly not developmentally normal
Questions about rehabilitation techniques
put into care and abused again
what did Koluchova study?
Koluchova (1972,1991) studied twin boys born in the former Czechoslovakia.
what happened to the chec twins?
The boys step mother treated them very cruelly. They spent the next 5 1/2 years locked in the cellar of their house.
small, rickets, communicated through gestures.
how were the twins treated after being found?
The boys were put in a school for children with learning difficulties and were adopted.
by what age did the boys not show nay signs of privation?
14
the chec twins had lives which were good they…
They had a good relationship with their adoptive parents.
They had a close relationship with their adoptive siblings.
They showed no signs of psychological abnormality.
Went on to university.
Both twins later married and had families and enjoyed close warm relationships
what san issue with check twin study ?
One idea that psychologists have had regarding this study is that because the children were together they formed a bond so they understood how to form relationships more successfully than children suffering privation alone (such as Genie).
studies on privation have problems like..
Difficulty generalising from single cases or small samples
Difficulty separating effects of privation, abuse, malnutrition, other trauma or congenital abnormality
