Romanian orphan studies: Institutionalisation Flashcards
What was the main reason for the orphan crisis in Romania in the 1990s?
The Romanian government required women to have five children, and many families couldn’t afford to care for them, leading to large numbers of children being placed in orphanages with poor conditions.
What is the purpose of studying Romanian orphanages in research on maternal deprivation?
Orphan studies provide an opportunity to investigate the effects of institutional care and deprivation on emotional and intellectual development.
What is the English and Romanian Adoptee (ERA) study and who conducted it?
The English and Romanian Adoptee (ERA) study, conducted by Michael Rutter and colleagues, followed 165 Romanian orphans adopted by families in the UK to assess the impact of early institutional care on development.
What were the findings regarding the IQ of children adopted from Romania?
Children adopted before six months had a mean IQ of 102, those adopted between six months and two years had an IQ of 86, and those adopted after two years had an IQ of 77. These differences remained at age 16.
What is “disinhibited attachment” and when does it occur in children?
Disinhibited attachment is a condition where children show indiscriminate social behavior, being affectionate with both familiar and unfamiliar adults. It was seen in children adopted after six months in institutional care.
What is the significance of adopting children before the age of six months according to the ERA study?
Children adopted before six months had better outcomes, with fewer showing disinhibited attachment and recovering more quickly in terms of intellectual development.
What did the Bucharest Early Intervention (BEI) project investigate?
The BEI project, conducted by Charles Zeanah, assessed attachment types in Romanian children aged 12-31 months who had spent most of their lives in institutional care, comparing them to a control group.
What was the result of the attachment assessments in the Bucharest Early Intervention project?
74% of the control group children were securely attached, compared to only 19% of the institutional group. Additionally, 44% of the institutional group showed disinhibited attachment.
How does living in an institution affect attachment in children?
Children in institutions often develop disinhibited attachment, which includes being overly affectionate and social with both familiar and unfamiliar adults due to the lack of stable, consistent caregivers.
What is the impact of institutionalisation on intellectual development, according to Rutter’s research?
Children adopted before six months showed significant recovery in intellectual development, catching up to their peers by age four, while those adopted later showed lasting intellectual deficits.
Why do children in institutions often show signs of intellectual disability when they arrive in new homes?
Many children in institutional care show signs of intellectual disability due to the deprivation and lack of stimulation in their early years.
What is the “sensitive period” for attachment, as mentioned in the context of institutionalisation?
The sensitive period refers to a critical time frame during early development (around the first six months) when children are most capable of forming secure attachments.
strength (1) of ROMANIAN ORPHANAGE STUDIES
One strength of the Romanian orphanage studies is their application to improve conditions for children growing up outside their family home
Studying the Romanian orphans has improved psychologists’ understanding of the effects of early Institutional care and how to prevent the worst of these effects (Langton 2006). This has led to improvements in the conditions experienced by looked-after children, i.e. children growing up in the care system. For example children’s homes now avoid having large numbers of caregivers for each child.
Instead the children tend to have one or two ‘key workers’ who play a central role in their emotional care. Also institutional care is now seen as an undesirable option for looked-after children. Considerable effort is made to accommodate such children in foster care or to have them adopted instead
This means that children in institutional care have a chance to develop normal attachments and disinhibited attachment is avoided.
strength (2) of ROMANIAN ORPHANAGE STUDIES
Another strength of the Romanian studies is the lack of confounding variables.
There were many orphan studies before the Romanian orphans became available to study (e g. orphans studied during the Second World War). Many of the children studied in orphanages had experienced varying degrees of trauma, and it is difficult to disentangle the effects of neglect, physical abuse and bereavement from those of institutional care. However the children from Romanian orphanages had, in the main, been handed over by loving parents who could not afford to keep them.
This means that results were much less likely to be confounded by other negative early experiences (higher internal validity)-
limitation of ROMANIAN ORPHANAGE STUDIES
One limitation of the Romanian orphanage studies is the current lack of data on adult development.
The latest data from the ERA Study looked at the children in their early- to mid-20s. This means that we do not currently have data to answer some of the most interesting research questions about the long-term effects of early institutional care.
These research questions include the lifetime prevalence of mental health problems and participants’ success in forming and maintaining adult romantic and parental relationships. It will take a long time to gather this data because of the longitudinal design of the study, i.e. the same participants are followed over a long period.
This means it will be some time before we know more completely what the long-term effects are for the Romanian orphans. It is possible that late-adopted children may ‘catch up.
