This case study describes one of the most severe cases of childhood privation on record within the psychological literature.
Cases such as this, provide psychologists with the opportunity to further our understanding of "normal" childhood development. This strategy is familiar in abnormal and developmental psychology and is used to compensate for the fact that formal experimentation cannot be undertaken in these sorts of areas.
Study is about a pair of identical - monozygotic - twin boys "reared from 18 months to 7 years in social isolation by a psycopathic stepmother and an inadequate father".
The researcher was part of a multi-discipplinary tea which was involved with the children when they wre admitted to hospital.
Twins' mother died after giving birth to them in September 1960. First 11 months of life they lived in a children's home.
By 18 months they were living with father again and with his new wife and 4 other children, 2 of whom were their natural siblings.
Authorities only became involved again after the father had taken the twins to a local paediatrician in order to obtain a certificate granting them exemption from entering primary school.
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Czech Twins (2):
A trial ensued. The twins had been brought up in isolation from the rest of the family, unable to go outside or into the main family living room. Their room was unheated and they were periodically locked in a cellar and beaten.
Effects of the twins 5 1/2 years of privation were wide ranging. Aged 7 they could hardly walk, had very poor fine motor skills and hardly any spontaneous speech. Their play skills were primitive, they were timid and mistrustful, their ranges of emotional expression were limited and their IQ's "would have been within the range of imbecility". Also unable to understand the meaning of pictures. Koluchova's assessment of their mental age was that they were functioning, on average, at the level of 3-year-old children.
After spending sometime in a children's home and a special school for children with learning difficulties, the twins moved into a permanent foster home and into mainstream school.
Their development from 7 - 10 appears to have been relatively rapid for by that age the WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) showed that they were functioning intellectually at around average levels, with particular gains having been made on verbal components of the test.
Seems a stable environment had compensated to some extent for the earlier extremes of deprivation.
The account emphasises cognitive and intellectual development. Emotional impact is much less easy to assess.
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Czech Twins (3):
A crucial part of the court case against the father and stepmother made it essential for the prosecution to demonstrate that the children's disabilities age 7 had been caused by extreme deprivation rather than, as the stepmother claimed, that they had been defective from birth. Example of how difficult it is to separate out the influences of nature and nurture in such cases.
Case studies are noted for the richness of data which they produce and the human dramas they reveal, but they have their limitations. This is just one person's account of a complex state of affairs, and it was in her interest to provide a positive spin in regards to the boys development, particularly as she was a member of their rehabilitation team. The author has considerable licence in choosing which aspects of the case to present and the reader's acces to the case is controlled by Koluchova.
In 1991, when she revisited the case, Koluchova said that the condition of the boys 22 years after being taken in by their foster family, proved the poassibility fo total reparation of even severe deprivational damage. They made remarkable progress over a number of years and caught up with peers both intellectually and emotionally. Both drafted for national service, married and had children. Said to be entirely stable and enjoy warm relationships
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Czech Twins (4):
However...only very tenative conclusions can be drawn from one case study! The paper does suggest that it may be possible to compensate quite effectively for the early extremes suffered and in a small way challenges the notion of a "critical period" in early childhood during which our abilities and personality are "fixed".
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