romanian orphan studies and institutionalisation

• Rutter et al.’s research

  Procedures

  165 orphans were studied ages 6,11,15,22-25, assessing their physical, emotional, and cognitive development. They measured the extent good care made up for bad experiences, and compared them to a control group of 52 adopted children from the UK. 
• Rutter et al.'s research

  Findings

  When they first arrived in the UK they showed signs of delayed intellectual development. At age 11 there were different rates of recovery. Children adopted before the age of 6 months had a mean IQ of 107 and the children adopted after 6 months to around 2yrs their IQ was abnormally low of around 77, and these differences remained at the age of 16. ADHD was common around age 15-25.  Some showed signs of disinhibited attachment.
• Zeanah et al.’s research

  Procedure

  95 orphans aged 12-31 months and compared them to kids who did not grow up in an institution and asked their guardian if they showed any unusual social behaviour. 

  Findings

  Control group less than 20% disinhibited attachment and the percentage of orphans that were said to have disinhibited attachment is 44%. Control group 74% securely attached but the 19% of the orphans are securely attached.
• Effects of institutionalisation

  Disinhibited attachment 

  It is where a child displays the same social behaviour to their adoptive parent or foster carer. 

  Intellectual disability

  It is where a child has an abnormally low IQ due to not receiving intellectual stimulation 
• Strength is the lack of confounding variables. There were many orphan studies before Romanian studies such as orphans during wars who had suffered from confounding variables such as bereavement and trauma. But children within this Romanian had been handed over by loving parents who were unable to afford to keep them. Means that results were much likely to be confounded by other negative early experiences.
• But studying the children from Romanian orphan studies could have introduced new confounding variables such as having poor quality care within thr institution and little intellectual stimulation. Means that the harmful effects seen in studies of Romanian orphans may represent effects of poor institutional care rather than institutional care per se.
• Strength application to improve conditions for care. Studying Romanian orphans has improved psychologists understanding of the early effects of institutional care and how to prevent the worse effects, leading to improvements in the conditions in institutional care as they normally had large number of CG for each child and it has been reduced to 2 so they are able to get the central emotional care they need. Institutional care is now an undesirable option for looked-after children. Means that the children in institutional care have a chance to develop normal attachments
• Limitation is that there's a lack of adult data as it is a longitudinal study. Psychologists are interested in knowing the answers to some important research questions about children who grew up in institutional care and the effects of it in later life past the mid 20s as that is the amount of data they currently have. The interesting questions psychologists have is who they will  form, socialise and maintain and romantic and parental relationship. Means that it will be some time before we know the full long term impacts are for the Romanian orphans