Romanian Orphan Studies: Institutionalisation

Question 1

Rutter et al’s research - procedure

Answer 1

• followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans for many years
• orphans were adopted by families in the Uk
• investigate the extent to which good care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions
• physical, cognitive and emotional dev assessed at ages: 4,6,11,15 and 22-25 yrs
• group of 52 children from uk adopted around same time = control group

Question 2

Findings

Answer 2

• 1/2 adoptees showed signs of delayed intellectual development + majority were severely undernourished
• age 11 children showed different rates of recovery, related to age of adoption
• mean IQ of children:
  . adopted before age 6 = 102
  . adopted between 6 months + 2 years = 86
  . adopted after 2 years = 77
• children adopted after 6 months showed A style called disinhibited A
  Symptoms: attention seeking, clinginess, social beh towards all adults (familiar + unfamiliar)

Question 3

Zeanah et al - procedure + findings

Answer 3

Procedure:
- Bucharest early intervention (BEI) project, assessing A in 95 Romanian children aged 12-31 months who spent most of lives in institutionalised care
- compared to a control group of 50 children, never lived in institutionalised care
- A type was measured by the S.S, carers about symptoms of disinhibited A

Findings:
- 74% of control group were classed as securely attached
- only 19% of institutionalised group were securely attached
- the description of the disinhibited A applied to 44% of institutionalised children compared to less than 20% of controls

Question 4

Effects of institutionalisation

Answer 4

Disinhibited attachment -
. Equally friendly + affectionate towards family people + strangers (most children show stranger anxiety)
. In Romanian institutions, child might have 50 carers, but not spend enough time with them to form a secure attachment

Intellectual disability -
. Rutters study; children showed intellectual disability when they arrived in Britain
. Most adopted before 6 months caught up with control group by the age of 4
. Damage to intellectual development can be recovered provided adoption takes place before the age of 6 moths

Question 5

Evaluate the Romanian orphan studies - strengths

Answer 5

STRENGTH:
Application to improve conditions for children growing up outside their family home
- improved psychologists understanding of the effects of early institutional care, how to prevent the worst outcomes
- improvements in conditions for children growing up in care system e.g. less caregivers per child, now just 1 essential C.G
- big effort to put children in institutionalised care to foster homes / adopted

STRENGTH:
Lack of confounding variables; children from Romanian study had loving parents who could not afford to keep them. Instead of previous studies where many children experienced trauma
- findings less likely to be confounded by previous trauma
COUNTERPOINT:
Might have introduced other confounding variables; quality of institutions were extremely poor.
- harmful effects seen in the studies may represent effects of poor I. Care rather than I. Care

Question 6

Limitations

Answer 6

LIMITATION:
Current lack of data on adult dev;
- don’t have findings on the long-term effect of early institutionalised care
- research Q include mental health condition, maintaining romantic + parental relationships
- take longer to gather data, longnitudinal design i.e. same pts over long time
Long time before we know what the long term effects are