RUTTER PLAN Flashcards
1
Q
A01
A
- Rutter distinguished between privation and deprivation.
- Privation is never having formed an attachment.
- Deprivation is the loss of an attachment.
- In the context of attachment institutionalisation refers to the effects of growing up in an orphanage, and children adopting the norms of values of the institution resulting in a loss of identity and impaired social skills.
- Many Romanian parents couldn’t afford to keep their children and consequently many children ended up in huge orphanages- due to the obligation of having to have 5 children.
- Some of the effects of institutionalisation are: Delayed intellectual development and disinhibited attachment.
- Delayed intellectual development states that Intellectual development can be damaged asaresult of institutionalisation.
- (However, most of the children who are adopted before the age of 6 months can catch up with the control group by the age of 4).
- Disinhibited attachment: - Children are equally friendly and affectionate towards people they know as well as strangers
2
Q
Rutter
A
- Rutter in fact wanted to test to what extent good care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions.
- He followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain.
- physical , cognitive and emotional development was assessed at ages 4, 6, 11 and 15 years.
- A group of 52 British children adopted around the same time have served as a control group
3
Q
One limitation of research into romanian orphans is that they were unaware of the long term impact of it.
A
- For example, The adopted orphans in the ERA study were only followed into their mid-teens. This means that we are unable to see the long term effects and if the effects are temporary or not.
- Our brains don’t stop growing until 20-25 years old, so there’s a possibility that the orphans may have caught up intellectually soon after.
- Therefore, we can’t be confident that these effects of institutionalisation are forever.
- This is a disadvantage as it’s a limited explanation as it hasn’t been studied longitudinally.
4
Q
One limitation of research into romanian orphans is that it lacks adequate control.
A
- For example, The ERA was a natural experiment.
- The researchers did not interfere with the adoption process, children were not randomly allocated to the ’conditions’.
- This means the children who were adopted may have been more sociable as people would often choose babies who were more sociable to adopt amongst the thousands there.
- This is a disadvantage as it may be a confounding variable.
- They may not have had any
issues when they were older as they were naturally sociable, and thus not shown any effects of institutionalisation. - However, in Rutter’s study the children were too young to suffer from trauma before institutionalisation thus this reduces it being confounded by trauma or loss
5
Q
One limitation of research into romanian orphans is that findings from the study are not generalisable
A
- as the Romanian orphans are not typical to the ones around the world.
- For example, Romanian orphanages had particularly poor standards of care and unusually low levels of intellectual stimulation.
- This is because there were thousands of orphans and so had to be put in rooms with hundreds of beds in rows.
- This means the effects of institutionalisation may not be due to institutionalisation, but in fact a lack of intellectual stimulation.
- This is a disadvantage as it assumes that everyone who would be in these orphanages suffer from disinhibited attachment and delayed intellectual development.
- Yet, this depends on the quality of care at the orphanage, not the fact that they were at an orphanage.
