Romanian orphan studies Flashcards
Institutionalisation
When babies and children are placed in an institution in a building where due to unfortunate circumstances, are unable to be looked after by parents or caregivers in their normal home.
Institution
Living arrangements outside the family/family home in a building such as a hospital, mental home or orphanage
What are the two negative consequences of institutionalisation?
The children adopting rules and norms of institution that can impair functioning
Loss of personal identity (deindividuation)
What happened in 1966 in Romania?
The government under the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu tried to boost the population by encouraging large families and banning abortion
What happened in 1989 in Romania?
The regime collapsed and the western world became aware of the plight of the orphans. there were 100,000 orphans in 600 state run orphanages. Children spent days alone in clubs with little stimulation.
Rutter and Songua-Barke 2010
ERA (English and Romanian Orphans) Led study of a group of Romanian orphans since the 1990s. The study includes 165 Romanian children who spend their early lives in romanian institutions and suffered from institutionalisation. The romanian children who entered the UK fell into 3 age groups
What were the 3 age groups in the ERA study?
1) 54, before 6 months
2) 57, 6 months and 2 years
3) 54, 2-4 years
How frequently were children tested in the ERA study?
Tested each at regular intervals ages 4, 6,11,15 to assess their physical cognitive and social development
What was the control group in the ERA study?
52 british children adopted before 6 months
What were the findings of the ERA study?
At adoption, Romanian orphans lagged behind British counterparts on all measures of physical, social, emotional and cognitive development. by 4, some Romanian children had caught up with British counterparts - especially those adopted before 6 months.
What did follow-ups show in the ERA study?
Romanian children adopted after 6 months and experienced a longer period of institutional care, were more likely to suffer social, emotional and cognitive deficits.
What was the mean IQ for children at 11 in the ERA study?
before 6 months - 102
between 6 months and 2 years - 86
between 2-4 years - 77
these IQ differences also remained when the children were 16 years of age.
What did Romanian children adopted after the age of 6 show?
Disinhibited attachments
What are symptoms of disinhibited attachments?
attention seeking, clingy, and social behaviour directed indiscriminately towards all adults, both familiar and unfamiliar.
What is disinhibited attachment?
A typical effect of spending time in an institution. They are equally friendly and affectionate towards people they know well or who are strangers that they have just met. This is highly unusual behaviour as most children at about 2 years still show stranger anxiety.
What did Rutter 2006 explain about disinhibited attachment?
It is an adaptation to living with multiple carers during the critical period for attachment formation. In poor quality institutions like those in Romania, a child might have 50 carers - none of who they see enough to form secure attachments
What did they conclude from the ERA study?
Institutional care doesn’t always mean that children won’t recover especially those adopted before the age of 6 months. However, Rutters study shows that if conditions in an institution are appalling (as in Romania) this can lead to long term consequences for the children. Supports the idea that the effects of institutionalisation can be minimised if the children are adopted as young as possible
What are the disadvantages of the ERA study?
- They didn’t know the conditions of the orphanages in Romania before the children entered the UK
- Ethical issues such as consent
- Only some of the children received detailed clinical investigations so it is difficult to fully generalise the findings
- Natural experiment so there may have been many extraneous variables which could have affected the findings of this study such as quality of care received from the parents of the adopted children.
What are the other studies on Romanian orphans?
Le Mare and Audet (2006), Zeanah et al. (2005)
Le Mare and Audet (2006)
Longitudinal study of 36 Romanian orphans adopted to families in Canada. Adopted orphans were physically smaller than a matched control group at age 4.5 years but the difference had disappeared by age 11 - this was also the case for physical health.
What does Le Mare and Audet (2006) study suggest?
This study suggests that recovery is possible from the effects of institutionalisation on physical development.
Bucharest Early Intervention Project
Zeanah et al. (2005)
Zeanah et al. (2005)
compared 95 Romanian children who had spent 90% of their lives in an orphanage compared to a control group of 50 children who had never been in an institution. The children were aged between 12 and 31 months and assessed using the Strange Situation.
Zeanah et al (2005) - findings
74% of the control group were securely attached compared to 19% of the institutional group. In fact 65% of this group were classified as Type D - disorganised attachments. Furthermore the description of disinhibited attachment applied to 44% of this group compared to less than 20% of the controls.
What are the effects of institutionalisation?
Physical underdevelopment, Intellectual underfunctioning (mental retardation), Disinhibited attachment, Poor parenting
Physical underdevelopment (effects of institutionalisation)
Children in institutional care are usually physically small, research has shown (Gardner, 1972) that lack of emotional care rather than poor nourishment is the cause of what has been called deprivation dwarfism.
Intellectual underfunctioning (mental retardation) (effects of institutionalisation)
cognitive development is affected by emotional deprivation, shown in Skodak and Skeels (1949) study. They found that these children scored poorly on intelligence tests. However, when some of these children were transferred to a different institution where some inmates gave the children emotional care, the IQ scores improved by up to 30 points.
Disinhibited attachments (effects of institutionalisation)
form of insecure attachment where children do not discriminate between people they choose as attachment figures. Such children will treat unfamiliar people with inappropriate familiarity and show over-friendliness and can even be attention seeking.
Poor parenting (effects of institutionalisation)
Harlow showed monkeys raised in isolation or with surrogate mother became poor parents. Quinton et al. (1984) compared a group of 50 women raised in institutions with control group of women reared at normal homes. When the women were in their 20s it was found that the ex-institutional women were really struggling to be good parents, as many of their children also spent time in care.
What are the strengths of Institutionalisation studies?
Real life application
Value of longitudinal studies
Rutters research has fewer extraneous variables than other orphan studies
What is the real life application in the institutionalisation studies?
Led to improvements in the care of children in institutions (Langton, 2006). Orphanages now avoid large numbers of caregivers for each child and instead ensure that a much smaller number of people, perhaps only one or two people, play a central role for the child.
And if adoption is to happen - it needs to be whilst the baby is as young as possible and it is necessary for a child to still be within the critical period if they are to be adopted.
What is the value of longitudinal studies in institutionalisation studies?
we are more able to understand the effects of institutionalisation and whether they are forever or can be reversed
How has Rutters research had fewer extraneous variables than other orphan studies?
There were many orphan studies before the ERA but these studies involved children who had experienced loss or trauma before they were institutionalised leading to confounding variables but in the ERA there weren’t any extraneous variables meaning the findings of the ERA increased the internal validity which means that we can be more confident about the effects of institutionalisation.
What are the weaknesses of institutionalisation studies?
Ethical issues
Individual differences
What are the ethical issues in the institutionalisation studies?
- There was no consent taken from the actual orphans
- Psychological harm that may have been caused to the parents and children in this study
- Social sensitivity about adoption
What are the individual differences in the institutionalisation studies?
In all of the studies, some children are not as affected as others - there are individual differences. Rutter suggested that it might be that some of the children did receive special care in the institution because they smiled more or were just ‘cute’ - this means that they did have some attachment experiences.
