Romanian orphan studies: effects of institutionalisation

• Institutionalisation:

  • An institution is a place where children live for many years (e.g. orphanage)
  • Historically, institutions provided limited emotional care
  • 'orphan studies' of children in institutional care allow psychologists to investigate the effects of deprivation
• Rutter's ERA (English and Romanian adoptee study)

  • longitudinal study of 165 Romanian orphans
  • aimed to test whether good care could make up for earlier deprivation
  • compared results with control group of 52 adopted children of the same age
• Rutter's ERA findings:

  Age 6:

  adopted before 6 months: caught up emotionally, socially and cognitively

  adopted after 6 months: impaired language and social skills, disinhibited attachment
• Rutter's ERA findings:

  Age 11:

  adopted before 6 months: Romanian children had caught up with British children

  adopted after 6 months: significant deficits remained compared to control group. Poor attachment to adults, issues with peer relationships
• Rutter's conclusions:

  • age of adoption/length of time in the institution will determine the severity of the effects
  • long-term consequences of institutionalisation will not be as severe or can be reversed if the child is provided with sensititve care afterwards
• Zeanah et al - The Bucharest Early Intervention Project

  • 95 children who had spent majority of life in an institution compared with control group of 50 children
  • attachment type measured using the strange situation
  • carers were asked whether the children displayed disinhibited attachment
• disinhibited attachment = inappropriate behaviour with strangers, over friendly, affectionate
• Zeanah's findings:

  • Almost 3/4 of control group were securely attached compared to around 20% of institutional group
  • disinhibited attachment applied to almost half of the institutional group compared to 20% of the control group
• Effects of institutionalisation:

  • delayed intellectual development or low IQ - children may struggle more at school than their peers and may not learn behaviours/concepts as quickly
  • disinhibited attachment
  • emotional development problems
  • difficulty interacting with peers
  • delayed language/physical development
• Disinhibited attachment occurs as a result of living with multiple caregivers during the sensitive period for attachment formation
• Institutionalised children didn't make a secure attachment, meaning they developed an unhealthy internal working model which they could've used as a template for later relationships
• Strength: Practical applications. Orphan studies have concluded that early adoption leads to the best outcomes. This has changed adoption policies for the better as it has lead to improvements in the way that children are cared for in institutions (e.g. through the allocation of key workers). This shows that research into institutionalisation has been immensely valuable in real world settings.
• Limitation: Studies lack validity as children weren't randomly assigned to conditions (age of adoption) in Rutter et al's study. This means that children who were adopted early may have been the more sociable ones. This is a confounding variable and means that the findings must be interpreted with caution.
• Limitation: methodological issues makes it hard to draw conclusions. Children were NOT studied whilst they were in the orphanage. This means that it is not possible to conclude which aspects of the institutionalisation had the greatest impact on development.