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Romanian Orphans: Institutionalisation - Coggle Diagram
Romanian Orphans: Institutionalisation
Rutter et al (2011)
Procedure: followed a group of 165 Romanian Orphans who had been adopted by families in the Uk in an aim to see if good care could make up for poor early experiences
Emotional, physical and cognitive development was assesed at ages 4,6,11,15 and 22-25 years
A group of 52 children from the Uk adopted about the same time were used as a control group
Findings: On arrival, half the children showed signs of delayed intellectual development
Findings: the mean IQ of children adopted before the age of 6 months was 102. Adopted between 6 months and two years was 86 and after two years was 77
Findings: children adopted after 6 months showed disinhibited attachment: attention-seeking, clinginess, social behavior towards all adults even strangers
Zeanah et al (2005)
assessed attachment in 95 children aged 12-31 months who spent most their lives in institutionalized care and compared to a control group that had never experienced it
Their attahcment type was assessed using thr SS
Findings: found that 74% of the control group were securely attached
However only 19% of the instiutionalised group
Findings: 44% disinhibited attachment compared to less than 20% of the control group
Effects of Institutionalisation
Disinhibited attachment
Intellectual Disability
Evaluation
Real world Application
Helps to improve conditions for children living outside the family
Care workers are now assigned to specific children
Institutionalised care is also now avoided and a focus is on fostering or adoption
Means that disinhibted is mostly avoided
Fewer Confounding Variables
Other studies of orphans are likely to have the confounding variables of trauma and neglect
The Romanian orphans will have a lessened chance of having confounding variables and it is more likely that the research is valid
COUNTERPOINT: the Romanian orphanages had a very poor quality of care with little stimulation- The research may just be showing the effects of poor instiutionalised care not just institutionalised care
Lack of adult data
Adult data is missing as the study is relatively new
It may be that the children catch up