Romanian Orphan Studies
- Created by: CG24601
- Created on: 09-05-19 17:37
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- Romanian Orphan Studies
- institutionalisation
- the effects of living in an institutional setting, for example a hospital or orphanage where children live for long, continuous periods of time
- Effects
- Disinhibited attachment
- a typical effect of spending time in institutions
- indiscriminate social behaviour - act just as friendly and affectionate to strangers as they do friends
- Rutter explains this as an adaptation to living with multiple carers during their sensitive period
- Mental retardation
- all children showed signs of retardation when they first arrived
- children adopted before six months generally caught up with the control by age four
- all children showed signs of retardation when they first arrived
- intellectual and emotional development can be recovered provided adoption takes place before six months
- Disinhibited attachment
- Background
- Ceaucescu required romanian women to have five children which many couldn't afford
- The children that families couldn't afford would be put in institutions with very poor conditions
- After the 1989 Revolution, many children were adopted by British parents
- Rutter's ERA study
- Procedure
- Rutter et al. followed 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain
- They wanted to study whether good care could make up for poor early childhood experiences in institutions
- Physical, cognitive and emotional developments assessed at ages 4, 6, 11 and 15
- a control of 52 British kids adopted around the same time
- Rutter et al. followed 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain
- Findings
- when they first arrived in the UK, half the adoptees showed signs of delayed intellectual development and most were severely under-nourished
- the mean IQ for those adopted after six months was 86, compared to 102 for those adopted before six months
- differences remained at age 16
- those adopted after six months showed signs of disinhibited attachment, those adopted before rarely did
- Disinhibited attachment - attention seeking, clinginess and indiscriminate social behaviour
- Procedure
- the Bucharest Early Intervention Project
- Procedure
- Zeanah et al. assessed attachment in 95 children aged 12-31 months who had spent most of their lives in institutionalisation
- control group of 50 children who had never spent time in institutions
- measured their attachment type with the strange situation
- carers were asked about any unusual social behaviour for signs of disinhibited attachment
- Findings
- 74% of the control were secure compared to 19% of the orphans
- 65% classified with disorganised attachment
- disorganised attachment symptoms were found in 44% of the institution kids compared to only 20% of the controls
- Procedure
- Real-life application
- enhanced understanding of the effects of institutions, leading to improvements in the way institutions are run
- institutions now provide a key worker and limit the amount of carers a child has
- enhanced understanding of the effects of institutions, leading to improvements in the way institutions are run
- Fewer extraneous variables than other orphan studies
- a lot of orphan studies involve orphans who experienced huge loss or trauma before they entered an institution
- Romanian orphans lack confounding participant variables
- its possible to study the effects of institutions only with Romanian orphans as they don't have the same extent of trauma pre-institution
- Romanian orphanages were atypical
- it is possible that the conditions were so bad that results cannot necessarily be applied
- because of the unusual situational variables, studies may lack general-isability
- institutionalisation
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