privation Flashcards
what is privation?
privation is the lack of having any attachments due to the failure to develop such attachments during early life.
what is disruption?
deprivation occurs when the bond has been formed and is then broken for what are generally fairly long periods of time. Thus, separation is a mild form of deprivation
what is separation?
• Separation involves distress when separated from a person to whom there is an attachment bond for a relatively short period of time.
describe the case studies done by the Robertsons(1967 – 1973). about the impact of separation from the primary caregiver on infants.
- Laura was filmed through an 8 day stay on a children’s ward, she alternates between calm and distress and begs to go home.
- John was placed in a residential nursery for 9 days. Dad visited regularly but John had to compete for attention from very busy nurses. On the first 2 days John behaved fairly normally but then broke down, cried, refused food and drink. In the second week he spent long periods lying quietly with his thumb in his mouth, comforting himself with a teddy. He screamed and struggled away from his mother when she returned and had outbursts for months afterwards.
- Jane, Lucy, Thomas and Kate were under 3 and placed in foster care with the Robertsons whilst their mothers were in hospital. Attempts were made to sustain a high level of substitute emotional care, visits by the father and visits to the hospital. The children seemed to be adjusted and did not reject their mother on return.
what is the protest-despair -detachment model (PDD) and who made it?
Bowlby and Robertson (1952)
- Protest - an intense period, the child cries for much of the time and seems panic-stricken. Anger and fear are present.
- Despair - a total loss of hope. The child is often apathetic, and shows little interest in its surroundings. The child often engages in self-comforting behaviour such as thumb-sucking or rocking.
- Detachment - the child appears to behave in a less distressed way. If the mother /caregiver re-appears during this stage, they are not responded to with any great interest.
what were the strengths of Bowlby and Robertson (1952) (PDD)?
- Applications: In a survey of 1952 only 25% of children’s hospitals allowed daily visiting as it was viewed as disruptive. The Robertson’s work was influential in showing the distress experienced by children separated from their caregivers.
- High validity: the studies were naturalistic observations – real life events in a realistic setting. The study also has high internal validity because the observations were filmed in a rigorous way unbiased by observer expectations (lack of observer bias) and the record is available for others to inspect and draw their own conclusions (replication of analysis)
what were the weaknesses of Bowlby and Robertson (1952) (PDD)?
- The Robertsons studies were case studies of few children, it maybe that they responded differently from others and raises the question of individual differences
- Barrett(1997)reviewed studies on separation and concluded that securely attached children may cope reasonably well with disruption but insecurely attached children maybe particularly distressed.
- Barrett also argued that the PDD model is flawed because it assumes that very young children are much less competent than is actually the case. Thus, many young children have a greater ability to cope with separation than was assumed by Robertson and Bowlby (1952).
What factors affect the child’s response to separation?
Young children do not all respond in the same way to short separations - some become much more distressed than others.
- The age of the child: the response to short-term separation is strongest between the ages of about 12 and 18 months.
- The type of attachment between the child and the caregiver: a securely attached child is more likely to cope better with short separations than a child with an insecure-ambivalent attachment type. This may be because of their belief that the mother figure will return.
- The sex of the child: boys seem to respond more strongly to separation than girls although there are wide differences within as well as between sexes.
- The quality of replacement care
describe Bowlby’s Maternal deprivation hypothesis.
- Bowlby believed that it was not enough to make sure that a child was well fed and kept safe and warm. He thought that infants and children needed a mother’s emotional care to ensure continuing normal mental health.
- Bowlby believed that a child who is denied care because of frequent and/or prolonged separations before the age of about 2 years – the critical period - will become emotionally disturbed, particularly if there is no substitute mother-person available.
- Breaking the maternal bond with the child during the early years of its life is also likely to have serious effects on its intellectual and social development.
- Bowlby also claimed that many of theses negative effects could be permanent and irreversible.
- However, contrary to popular belief, Bowlby argued that about 25% (rather than 100%) of children suffer long-term damage from maternal deprivation
name two studies that support Bowlby’s Maternal deprivation hypothesis.
Skeels and Dye (1939) studied children placed in institutions and found that these children scored poorly on intelligence tests. Spitz and Wolf (1946) observed that 100 ‘normal’ children who were placed in an institution became severely depressed within a few months
Bowlby (1944): 44 juvenile thieves
• Bowlby worked as a psychiatrist. He was interested in adolescents attending the clinic because they were `thieves’. They were unable to understand how other people felt and lacked normal signs of affection. Bowlby diagnosed 14 of the thieves as affectionless psychopaths - individuals who particularly lacked emotional sensitivity.
• Bowlby compared 44 juvenile thieves (The experimental group) with another group of 44 emotionally disturbed teenagers who were not thieves. (The control group)
• The children and their parents were interviewed about early life experiences, with particular attention paid to separations.
Findings
• 86% of affectionless thieves had experienced frequent early separations from their mothers compared with 17% (5 out of 30) of the other thieves.
• Almost none of the control participants experienced early separations, whereas 39% of all the thieves had experienced early separations, continual or repeated stays in foster homes or hospitals, often the children were not visited by their families.
Conclusions
It suggests a link between early separation and becoming a thief (i.e. someone lacking a social conscience). Also lack of continuous care may well cause emotional maladjustment, especially in the extreme form of affectionless psychopathy
name three studies that don’t support Bowlby’s Maternal deprivation hypothesis.
Skodak and Skeels (1949) arranged for some institutionalised infants with IQ deficits to be placed in a home for special needs adults while a control group remained in the orphanage. When the children’s IQs were tested after 1.5 years they found that the IQs of the control group had, on average, fallen 26 points, whereas the transferred group’s IQ rose 28 points. It could be that the adults enjoyed having children to look after and provided the missing emotional care.
Bowlby et al., (1956). 60 children under the age of 4 who had TB required a prolonged stay in hospital. The nurses did not provide substitute maternal care and the children were only visited once a week. The children experienced prolonged early deprivation. When these children were assessed in adolescence there were no significant differences between them and their peers in terms of intellectual development. Bowlby et al. concluded that this study shows that the dangers of maternal deprivation may have been overstated. In this case early deprivation did not invariably cause emotional maladjustment. One explanation for the individual differences may be that some children were more securely attached and therefore better able to cope.
Bohman and Sigvardsson (1979) studied over 600 adopted children in Sweden. At the age of 11 26% of them were classified as ‘problem children’, probably the result of early experiences of deprivation prior to adoption. In a follow up study 10 years later, they concluded that none of the children were any worse off than the rest of the population. This would suggest that early, negative effects were reversed.
name two studies that support Rutters idea that privation causes permanent effects.
Hodges and Tizard (1989) studied 65 children, placed in an institution before 4 months old. ‘Caretakers’ were prevented from forming attachments with the children. They were assessed at 4 when some of the children had been adopted, returned to their natural homes or remained in the institution, again at 8 and 16. At each assessment the children, their parents and teachers were interviewed and asked to fill in questionnaires on attitudes and behaviour. At all ages there was also a control group of children raised in a ‘normal’ home environment. At each stage they were described as attention seeking by their teachers and experienced difficulty with their peers, but had formed close attachments with their parents or adopted parents .At age 16: The adopted children were as closely attached to their parents as the control group, whereas the ‘restored’ group were much less likely to be closely attached. All the ex-institutional adolescents were less likely to be liked by other children and more likely to be bullies.
This suggests that they had not fully recovered from their early privation because they were less able to form relationships. It showed that at least some of the negative effects of privation could be reversed provided that children are brought up in a loving environment. – with someone prepared to work hard at it.
Curtiss (1989) reported the case study of Genie. Locked in a room until she was 13 ½ because her father thought she was brain damaged, she had not been fed adequately, could not stand erect, had no social skills. She did not understand language and could not speak. Genie was given considerable assistance in the years after she was found. Her ability to perform tasks that did not depend on language improved rapidly. Genie’s language skills failed to reach normal adult levels. Her social skills remained limited; she seemed uninterested in people (Rymer, 1993) Her lack of recovery may be due to her extreme early emotional privation. Alternatively, it may be that the physical deprivation she experienced could explain her poor development (Curtiss, 1977; Rymer, 1993).
name two studies that don’t support Rutters idea that privation causes permanent effects.
Rutter et al. (1998) have been studying a group of 111 Romanian orphans, who spent their early months /years in extreme physical and emotional privation in institutions.
These children were adopted by British families before the age of 2.
By the age of 4 the children had apparently recovered.
This shows that recovery from extreme privation can be achieved given adequate care.
However, it is important to note that the age of adoption is within the period that Bowlby regarded as critical (i.e. under 2 ½ years of age).
The Czech twins (Koluchova, 1976) spent the first seven years of their lives locked up in a cellar by their stepmother. They were often beaten. They were barely able to talk and relied mainly on gestures rather than speech. The twins were fostered at the age of 9 by a pair of loving sisters. By 14 they had near normal intellectual and social functioning. At the age of 20, they were of above-average intelligence and had excellent relationships with the members of their foster family (Koluchova, 1991). It is possible they were ‘discovered’ at a young enough age and therefore could recover. It is also possible that they provided emotional care for each other, and thus did experience early attachment rather than privation.
what is the cycle of privation?
that children who experience early privation are in some way ‘driven’ to recreate the conditions of their own childhood when they themselves become parents. This idea of a ‘cycle of privation’ is an extremely controversial one. However, there is some research support for this. Quinton et al. (1985) studied the long-term effects of institutional care.
describe Quinton et al. (1985) study of the long-term effects of institutional care.
They compared a group of 50 women who had been reared in children’s homes with a control group of 50 women reared at home.
- When the women were in their 20s it was found that the ex ¬institutional women were experiencing extreme difficulties acting as parents.
- More of the ex-institutional women had children who had spent time in care and more of the ex-institutional women were rated as lacking in warmth when with their children.
