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Zeanah et al, 2005.

Rutter et al, 2011

  • Used the Strange Situation to assess the attachment type of 95 children aged 12-31 mths, who'd spent an average of 90% of their life in institutional care.
  • Compared this with a control group of 50 children who had never been in institutional care.
  • 74% of CG were securely attached as opposed to only 19% of IG (65% showed disorganised attachment).
  • 44% of IG and 20% of CG showed disinhibited attachment.
  • This means they are equally friendly and affectionate with those they know well and total strangers (when they should show stranger anxiety).
  • Rutter (2006) describes this as an adaptive strategy to cope with having multiple caregivers of varying quality.
  • Recovery of intellectual ability only occurs when removed from the institutional care before 6mths - the age when attachments start to form.
  • Carried out a longitudinal study of 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain.
  • Assessed physical, cognitive and emotional development at ages 4, 6, 11 and 15 years.
  • Compare to a control group of 53 children adopted from British orphanages at a similar time.
  • On arrival in the UK most of the Romanian children were undernourished and half of them showed signs of mental retardation.
  • By the age of 11 years the recovery rate was dependent on the age of adoption as shown by mean IQ's.
  • Below 6 mths = 102, 6 mths to 2 years = 86 and above 2 yrs = 77.
  • These remained constant at age 16.
  • Children adopted after 6 mths showed Disinhibited attachment. (define this)

Langton, 2006.

  • Because Romanian orphan studies have high application to real life they have been instrumental in changing how we provide institutional care.
  • Care is more personalised with only a few caregivers (keyworkers) assigned to each child - this ensures greater continuity.
  • Normal attachments are seen to form and less evidence of disinhibited attachments.

Rutter's ERA

Prognosis

May have confounding variables as orphans were not randomly assigned to adoption or institutional care.

This could be an artefact finding that it was just the 'cutest' or most social children that were selected by parents for adoption.

In the Bucharest Early Intervention project fostering and institutional care were randomly allocated - but this then raises ethical issues.

Conclusion

  • As teenagers there does seem to be lasting effects of institutionalisation.
  • But is this long term? Might it change in early adulthood?
  • Similarly those who were adopted early and show no adverse effects as teenagers may still develop problems as adults.

Former President, Nicolae Ceaușescu, decreed that Romanian women should have at least 5 children

  • The Romanian orphan studies have fewer confounding variables, as they allow us to focus on institutionalisation in isolation - previously orphan studies included highly traumatised children.
  • But these children are atypical because of their experience in the Romanian orphanages with poor hygiene, standards of care and overall opportunity for stimulation.
  • The results may lack generalisability.

Write your own conclusion in less than 100 words.

Conditions were often overcrowded, squalid and inadequate.

Due to high levels of poverty many families could not afford to keep these children

Many of these children ended up in huge, under-resourced orphanages.

These children became institutionalised.

Following the 1989 revolution, many of the children were adopted.

Romanian Orphan Studies

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