maternal deprivation Flashcards
maternal deprivation
the emotional and intellectual consequences of separation between a child and his/her mother or mother-substitute
bowlby proposed that continuous care from a mother is essential for normal psychological development and that prolonged seperation from this adult causes serious damage to emotional and intellectual development
intellectual development
- believed that if children were deprived of their maternal care for too long they would experience delayed intellectual development, abnormally low IQ
support for intellectual development
Goldfarb:
- found lower IQ in children who had remained institutions as opposed to those who were fostered and thus had a higher standard of emotional care
emotional development
bowlby identified affectionless psychopathy as the inability to experience guilt or strong emotion towards others
- prevents a person developing fulfilling relationships and is associated with criminality
- affectionless psychopaths cannot appreciate the feelings of victims of lack remorse for their actions
bowlbys research: 44 theives procedure
- the link between affectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation
- 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing
- interviewed for signs of AP characterised as a lack of affection, guilt and empathy
- also interviewed families to check if they had experienced prolonged seperation from their mothers
- compared to a sample of 44 non-criminal but emotionally disturbed young people
44 theives findings
- 14/44 theives could be described as affectionaless psychopath
- 12 had experienced prolonged seperation from their mothers for first 2 years of their lives
- only 5 of the remaining 30 theives had experience seperations
- only 2/44 experienced long seperations
- concluded that prolonged early seperation caused affectionless psychopathy
limitation: flawed evidence
- bowlby carried out the interviews
- he knew in advanced which teenagers were intended to show AP
- researcher bias
