maternal deprivation a03

• Real world application , bowlbys theory had an important impact on Post war regarding how children were looked after in hospitals

  Before,Bolwby’s theory children were separated from parents when they spent time in the hospital and visiting was discouraged and even forbidden. Robertson(1952) filmed a two year old girl for the 8 day period she stayed at a hospital,she was seen to be frequently distressed and begs to go home, this supported bowlby's theoriesand led to a major social change in hospital care for children. supporting maternal deprivation theory as it shows emotional disturbance seperation and then deprivation causes
• There are flaws in the methodology of bowlby's study. firstly Retrospective recall might be inaccurate - As Bowlby was asking the adolescent participants to recall separations that they had experienced years earlier, their responses would have been subject to inaccuracies/ distortions. there are also issues with Investigator effects - Bowlby designed and conducted the self-reports himself and as a result, his presence and interpretation might have influenced the outcome of the research. Bowlby’s diagnosis of affectionless psychopathy might have been distorted by researcher confirmation bias. Thus reducing the valditiy of the findings
• Conclusions are correlational - Bowlby found a relationship between early separation and delinquency/ affectionless psychopathy but we cannot definitively conclude that the separation was the cause. There may have been a third unidentified variable that accounted for the delinquency/ affectionless psychopathy. For example, the immediate cause of the separation (such as neglect or abuse) might have been the direct cause of problems experienced at adolescence rather than the separation itself.