Romanian Orphan Studies: Insititutionalisation

Question 1

What are orphan studies

Answer 1

Studies based off of orphanages children who are placed in care because their parents cannot look after them (parents either died or abandoned them )

Question 2

What did the idea of orphan studies originate from

Answer 2

Studying the effects of deprivation

Question 3

What does orphan studies allow us to look into

Answer 3

Effects of institutional care and consequent institutionalisation that rose in Romania in 1990s

Question 4

How did the Romanian orphanage issue come about

Answer 4

Many Romanian parents could not afford to keep their children and so they ended up in huge orphanages which were in poor conditions

Question 5

How many researches on orphan studies were conducted

Answer 5

2

Question 6

Who were the 2 researchers for the researches on orphan studies

Answer 6

Rutter and Zeanah

Question 7

What was the procedure for Rutters research

Answer 7

Him and his group followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans for many years. These orphans were adopted by families in the UK. Physical, cognitive and emotional development has been assessed at ages 4 6 11 15 and 22-25 years. A control group was made from 52 adopted students from the uk

Question 8

What was the aim of Rutters study

Answer 8

To investigate the extent to which good care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions

Question 9

What were the findings of Rutters study (excluding attachment)

Answer 9

.half of the adoptees showed signs of delayed intellectual development
.majority malnourished
.different rates of recovery that were related to their age of adoption
.IQ differed depending on age and the same differenced remained age 16
.adhd was more common in 15- 22-25 age sample

Question 10

What were the findings of Rutters study (attachment)

Answer 10

.a difference in outcome was shown on whether adoption took place before or after 6 months
.adopted after 6 months showed disinhibited attachment
.those before 6 months rarely showed disinhibited attachment

Question 11

What are the symptoms of disinhibited attachment

Answer 11

Attention seeking, clinginess and social behaviour directed indiscriminately to all adults

Question 12

What was the procedure of Zeanahs research

Answer 12

.conducted the Bucharest Early Intervention project
.assessing attachment in 95 Romanian children aged 12-31 months who have been living most of their lives in care
.compared to a control group of 50 children who have never lived in an institution
.attachment type was measured using strange situation
.carer were asked about unusual social behaviours

Question 13

What ere the findings of Zeanahs research

Answer 13

.74% of the control group were classes as securely attached
.19% of the institutional group were classed as securely attached
.44% of institutionalised children followed the description of disinhibited attachment
.less than 20% of the control group followed the characteristic of disinhibited attachment

Question 14

What type of attachment do those who spent their early lives in an institution often show

Answer 14

Disinhibited attachment

Question 15

What is disinhibited attachment

Answer 15

Being equally friendly and affectionate towards familiar people and strangers and this is unusual since most children’s how stranger anxiety in their second year

Question 16

What did rutter say about the adaptation with disinhibited attachment

Answer 16

disinhibited attachment is an adaptation to living with multiple caregivers during the sensitive period for attachment formations

Question 17

Does quality in caregivers matter when figuring out attachment types

Answer 17

Yes because you could have 50 carers (like in Romania) but not spend enough quality time with any of them so there is no secure attachment formed

Question 18

What did Rutters research show in terms of the intellectual disability

Answer 18

.when first arrived in uk most showed signs of intellectual disability
.however most of those adopted before 6 months, caught up to the control group by the age of 4

Question 19

What is the strength of Romanian orphan studies (without counterpoint)

Answer 19

Application to improve conditions for children growing up outside their family home. Improved psychologists understanding on the effects of early institutional care an how to prevent worst of these effects. Improvements in childcare conditions. Institutional care is now an undesirable option and foster or adoption is seen to be better.

Question 20

What is an other strength of Romanian orphan studies (with counterpoint)

Answer 20

Lack of confounding variables. Many other orphan studies were available from the past before the Romanian one however they had many confounding variables such as trauma due to world wars ect.. With the romanian one, they were handed by loving parents as they couldn’t afford to keep them. High Internal Validity

Question 21

What was the counterpoint of the strength on the lack of confounding variables

Answer 21

They might have introduced different confounding variables. The quality of the care in the institutions were extremely poor s maybe the harmful effects are from the poor institutional care rather than the institutional care itself

Question 22

What is a limitation of Romanian orphan studies

Answer 22

Lack of data on adult development. We don’t have current data to answer some of the questions about long term effects on early institutional care. It takes long to gather this data because of the longitudinal design of this study. This means it will take some time before we know what the long term effects are