Effects of institutionalisation (Romanian orphans)

• How did there come to be so many orphans in Romania?

  • Following overthrow of Ceausescu, it became known that Romania had severe problems with institutionalisation
  • This was because Ceausescu had been forcing women to get pregnant, leading to a massive influx of infants in the country
  • Children in orphanages subject to poor standards of care, nutrition and sanitation
  • Babies & children spent almost all time in cribs and were rarely held
• Studies of Romanian orphans are natural experiments. Psychologists took advantage of 'naturally occurring phenomena' to study its effects on development. Also longitudinal as psychologists regularly revisited the same groups of children repeatedly throughout childhood/teenage years to study development.
• Who carried out the English and Romanian adoptees study (ERA)?

  Rutter and Sonuga-Barke
• What did the ERA study?

  They studied Romanian children who had been adopted by British families and compared them with British adopted children.
• How was the ERA carried out?

  They followed a random sample of 165 Romanian orphans from institutional care before age 4 between 1990 and 1992. All orphans were adopted into the UK. They were studied at intervals throughout childhood and compared to a group of 52 UK born children who had been adopted but didn't experience institutional care in infancy.
• What were the findings of the ERA study?

  • Majority of Romanian adoptees made rapid gains in all areas of development
  • Some Romanian children adopted after age of 6 months experienced difficulties throughout childhood which were uncommon in control group e.g. inhibited attachment disorder
  • Also more likely to need intervention by educational, psychological and psychiatric services
  • After 15 years of age many still had emotional, conduct and peer-relationship problems
• What did the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) study?

  Studied children in Romania and compared those who were fostered with those who remained in institutional care. (After having both originally been in bad institutional care).
• How was the BEIP carried out?

  • Half of orphans studied remained in institutions and half were randomly selected for foster care
  • All children were tested for attachment, IQ and psychiatric problems at 30, 42 and 54 months and again at 8 years old
• What were the findings of the BEIP?

  • At start, all children had developmental delays. However, those in foster care outperformed those remaining in orphanages on every domain at each age after they had been fostered
  • As children got older, differences between fostered and orphanage-raised children were smaller
  • If child was removed from institutional care early, effects on their development across all areas was less severe. Their results suggest that removal from institutional care before age 2 is essential
• Evaluation points for both ERA and BEIP studies:

  • Natural experiments - high validity as no external intervention
  • Large sample - more representative & more generalisable to others who have gone through similar experiences
  • Ethical issues - repeated study invaded children's privacy/could be distressing
  • Other factors not considered e.g. inadequate nutrition/illness/lack of stimulation which could have contributed to developmental delays
  • Application - Informed policy making on adoption & resulted in drive to encourage early adoption to enable bonds to still be formed within critical period
• Evaluation point for BEIP:

  Random allocation in either institutional or foster care: children of different temperaments/intelligence likely to be evenly spread. Makes it less likely that these factor could account for differences in development of the 2 groups.
• Evaluation point for ERA:

  No random allocation as children were chosen for adoption. Those with more agreeable temperaments (e.g. a higher IQ) were more likely to be adopted. These characteristics may be why Romanian adoptees were able to make the rapid improvements in development that were observed.
• What is deprivation?


  When an infant loses the emotional attachment they had to a caregiver e.g. due to separation.
• What is privation?


  A situation where an infant never had the chance to form an attachment with a caregiver.