8. Romanian orphan studies

• Aim for the Romanian orphan studies

  After research was conducted on maternal deprivation it turned into orphan studies and looking at the devastating effects of initialisation on Romanian orphans
• Background


  Romanian president in the 1990s required everyone mother to have 5 children and when many families could not afford this their kids were place in huge orphanages with terrible conditions.

  Up until many of them were adopted by British families.
• Researchers


  Rutter et al (2011) and Zeanah et at (2005)
• Rutter et al (2011) procedure


  Followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans for years as a part of the English Romanian adoptee study.

  Physical, emotional, and cognitive development was tested in ages 4,6, 11, 15 and 22-25.

  52 children which had been adopted in the UK around the same time served as a control group.
• Rutter et al's aim


  was to investigate the extent to which loving care was able to make for poorly experiences in their early life in institutions.
• Rutter et al findings


  - When children first came to the UK, they showed delayed signs of intellectual development

  - The adopted children all showed different rates of recovery related to their age

  - Mean IQ of children adopted before the sag of 6M was 102, adopted between the ages of 6M and 2Y 87

  - Children adopted before 6M showed a particular attachment style disinhibited attachment
• Behaviours associated with disinhibited attachment

  clinginess, attention seeking very social behaviour with adults both familiar and unfamiliar
• Zeanah et al (2005) - procedure

  - conducted the Bucharest early intervention

  - Assessing attachment types in 95 Romanian children ages between 12-31M

  - Most had lived institutions for the most of their lives (90%) average.

  - They were compared to a control group of 50 children who had never been placed in institutions

  - Measured using strange situation

  - And careers were asked about behaviour associated with disinhibited attachment.
• Zeanah et al (2005) - findings

  74% in the control group were classed as securely attached and only 19% in in the institutionalised group.

  Disinhibited attachment applied to 44% of children in the institutionalised group but only 20% in the control group.
• Real world application


  - It is used to improve the conditions of children going up outside family homes by improving psychologists understanding of the effects of institutionalised.

  - This has led to improvement made to children's homes. - They now assign one or two key workers to each child to allow them to form successful attachments.

  - efforts have been made to reduce the number of children placed in these home by helping them get adopted and forested quicker.

  - This means children can develop normal attachments disinhibited attachment can be avoided.
• Fewer confounding variables


  - There have been many studies on institutionalised children like those from WW2

  - However, many of those children had experienced varying degrees of trauma from physical abuse, bereavement and neglect.

  - This makes it hard to distinguish the problems of institutions.

  - In contrast the children that partook in the Romanian orphan studies were handed over by loving parents who couldn't afford to keep them

  - This means the results are much less likely to be confounding by other negative early experiences increasing the overall internal validity.
• poor institutionalisation


  - On the other hand, it may have been subject to different confounding variables. As the quality of the institutions that these children were in was remarkably poor they received no comfort.

  - This means that the Romanian orphan studies may represent poor institutionalisation rather than institutionalisation in general.
• Lach of adult data -

  - There is a lack of data in the information regarding these infants in their later life.

  - The latest data we have is from children in their early to mid-twenties.

  - This means psychologists are unable to answer very valuable questions like how they were able to maintain future adult romantic relationships or the long-term effects of their mental health.