Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
ROMANIAN ORPHAN STUDIES - Coggle Diagram
ROMANIAN ORPHAN STUDIES
Background
-
Couples were taxed for being childless, leading to an abundance of children being born, then abandoned by their parents.
-
standard of orphanages ranged from poor to abysmal, with children spending their days alone in cribs with very little stimulation, either cognitive or emotional
key terms
Institutionalisation
‘living for a long, continuous period of time in a place like a hospital or an orphanage
outside of the original home environment, where there is often very little emotional care provided’.
Rutter et al 2010
procedure: 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain were tracked by Rutter et al (2010) longitudinally
111 were adopted before the age of 2, and 54 were adopted after the age of 2, but by the age of 4.
-
The Romanian orphans were then compared to a control group of 52 British children adopted before the age of 6 months.
The children were followed up at ages 4, 6, 11 and 15
findings
those adopted after the age of 4 had significant cognitive, social and physical development problems.
By age 11, the mean IQ of those adopted before the age of 2 was 106, compared to only 82 for those adopted after the age of 2.
by the age of 4, those adopted before the age of 2 had caught up (cognitively and physically) with the British children.
when they arrived in the UK, the Romanian orphans showed signs of mental retardation and were severely malnourished, were smaller than, and weighed less than the British orphans.
attachment
adopted after 6 months of age showed signs of disinhibited attachment, (an insecure attachment style characterised by clingy, attention seeking behaviour and indiscriminate sociability to adults (i.e. both familiar and unfamiliar strangers).
-
there appeared to be a differential outcome depending on whether adoption took place before or after 6 months.
evaluation
strength
better understanding of the direct effects of institutionalisation, which has led to improvements in the way that infants are cared for in children’s homes or orphanages
For example, having a defined number of carers, maybe only one or two, instead of the endless rotations of carers for orphans.
-
child a chance to develop a normal attachment and avoid the disinhibited attachments previously associated with institutionalised care
strength
-
This means there were less confounding participant variables making it more easy to observe the direct effects of institutionalisation
Earlier orphanage studies had more confounding variables e.g. earlier experiences of neglect or abuse prior to institutionalisation.
The Romanian orphans research therefore higher in internal validity because more able to observe the direct effects of institutional care on later social and emotional development.