Adoption Studies/ Case study Mind Map

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  • Adoption Studies
    • Adoptive children often selectively placed into families very similar to heir biological families.
    • Similarities between the child: 1) biological parents would therefore suggest a role for genes, 2) Adoptive parents suggest a role for the environment.
    • Adoptive children don`t share their environment with their biological families. If there are similarities with their biological family, It is likely to be due to genes and not the environment.
    • To asses this, measures are taken of the behaviour or characteristic being studied, such as personality or mental health disorder. The child and their adoptive aren't are compared.
    • the issue is that children usually have both the genes and environment in common with biological parents.
    • Alternatively, the same measures from the child can be compared to those for the biological parents.
    • Genes of biological parents, environment created by the adoptive parents.
    • If the effect of genes on Schizophrenia is being studied, a researcher might wants to find out whether children of a parent with Schizophrenia are more likely to develop Schizophrenia than children without a family history of it.
    • KETY ET AL (1994)
      • Carried out research in Finland with adoptive families.
      • Sample size: 155
      • Schizophrenia was diagnosed in a adopted children, 8 had biological mother with Schizophrenia, or diagnosed as having some form of psychoses.
      • More evidence has been found of Schizophrenia among adopted children whose biological mothers has Schizophrenia
      • An issue here to consider is that adoptive families are of MATCHED closely to the biological family, so the environments of the two families might not be as different as first thought.

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