Romanian orphans Flashcards
What are orphan studies?
Orphan studies are research investigations that focus on the effects of institutional care and deprivation on children who have been orphaned.
What are the key procedures of Rutter’s ERA (2011)?
Rutter et al. (2011) followed 169 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain, assessing their physical, cognitive, and emotional development at ages 4, 6, 11, and 15 years, with a control group of 52 British children.
What are the key findings of Rutter’s ERA (2011)?
Half of the adoptees showed delayed intellectual development upon arrival in the UK. The mean IQ scores varied by age of adoption, with those adopted before 6 months scoring 102, those adopted between 6 months and 2 years scoring 86, and those adopted after 2 years scoring 77.
What are the conclusions of Rutter’s ERA (2011)?
Children adopted after 6 months showed signs of disinhibited attachment, while those adopted before 6 months rarely displayed this attachment style.
What are the key procedures of The Bucharest Early Intervention Project (2005)?
Zeanah et al. (2005) assessed attachment in 95 children aged 21-31 months who had spent most of their lives in institutional care, comparing them to a control group of 50 children who had never lived in an institution.
What are the key findings of The Bucharest Early Intervention Project (2005)?
74% of the control group were securely attached, while only 19% of the institutional group were securely attached, with 65% classified as having disorganised attachment.
What are the long-term effects of institutionalisation according to these studies?
The long-term effects are not yet clear; some children may catch up in development, while others may experience emotional problems as adults.
How can the effects of institutionalisation studied via Romanian orphan studies be evaluated?
The studies have fewer extraneous variables than previous orphan studies, allowing for clearer observations of the effects of institutionalisation.
What is disinhibited attachment?
Disinhibited attachment is characterized by children being equally friendly towards familiar people and strangers, often due to having multiple caregivers during the sensitive period for attachment formation.
What is the impact of early adoption on mental retardation?
Most children showed signs of mental retardation upon arrival in Britain, but those adopted before 6 months generally caught up with their peers by age four.
What are the ethical issues in Rutter’s ERA project?
Children were not randomly assigned to conditions, which may have introduced confounding variables related to sociability.
What is a limitation of the Romanian orphan studies?
The conditions in Romanian orphanages were particularly poor, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to other situations of deprivation.
What real-life applications have arisen from studying Romanian orphans?
The studies have led to improvements in institutional care, such as reducing the number of caregivers per child to promote better attachment.
