Psychology-Attachment

• During the 1990s, horrific images flooded the news of children in poor conditions in Romanian orphanages
• The former Romanian president, Nicolai Ceausescu, had required Romanian women to have 5 children
• Many of the parents could not afford to keep their children and so many children ended up in large orphanages, where they were kept in poor conditions and received little in the way of emotional care
• After the Romanian Revolution of 1989 many of these children were adopted, some by British families
• Institutionalisation


  Living in an institutional setting, like a hospital or an orphanage, for long, continuous periods of time with very little emotional care
• Rutter et al. (2011) study


  1. Longitudinal study on 165 Romanian orphans adopted by British parents

  2. Children split into 4 groups based on age of adoption

  3. Each group assessed at ages 4, 6, 11 and 15
• At the start of the observations, over half of the Romanian children were suffering from severe malnutrition and a low IQ, showing delayed intellectual development, compared to the control group
• Findings


  • Age 6: those adopted after 6 months showed disinhibited attachment (overly friendly behaviour towards unknown adults)
  • Age 11: 54% of those children who were adopted after 6 months, that had shown disinhibited behaviour, still showed disinhibited attachment
  • Symptoms of disinhibited attachment include attention-seeking, clinginess and social behaviour directed indiscriminately towards all adults, whether familiar or unfamiliar
  • Age of adoption was a key factor in attachment type: those adopted before 6 months showed signs of a secure 'normal' attachment, those older than 6 months displayed disinhibited attachment
  • At age 11 there was a significant difference between children adopted before 6 months and those adopted later in terms of attachment style and IQ
• The mean IQ scores were: for those adopted before 6 months = 102, for those children adopted between 6 months and 2 years = 86, for those adopted after the age of 2 = 77
• Children as old as 9 or 10 made a good recovery if they were adopted by sensitive, loving parents
• Due to research on institutions and the negative effects they have, policy changes were made to benefit children; for example, children's homes now avoid having large numbers of caregivers for each child and instead now have one or two 'key workers' who play a central role in their emotional care
• In the Romanian orphans study there is a lack of confounding variables. The Romanian orphans had, in the main, been handed over by loving parents who could not afford to keep them
• The Romanian orphanage study allowed psychologists to study cause and effect, which is usually incredibly hard to do with adoptions studies, as those children being adopted have been removed for neglect or abuse reasons, however, this was not the case with the Romanian orphanages
• Hodges and Tizard (1989) stated the adverse effects of institutionalisation could be reversed if children were adopted by effective families or had adequate care. They found children who had been adopted by adequate families, often, coped better on measures of behavioural and peer relationships than those children returned to their biological families
• Children were not randomly allocated to conditions in this study, which means the more sociable children could have been adopted first
• This study could lack external validity as the quality of care was so poor in Romanian orphanages that it cannot be compared to others. This means the harmful effects seen in the studies of Romanian orphans may represent the effects of poor institutional care rather than institutional care in general
• There is a current lack of adult data on adult development. The latest data only looks at children in their early to mid-20s
• Critical period


  An attachment has to take place within a certain time scale, otherwise, it will never happen for the infant
• Critical period


  • Based on the biological idea of time scales in the physiological development of a fetus
  • For example, the limbs of a fetus need to be shown to be developing in the fourth week of pregnancy: After day 28 if this has not happened then it will not
• Bowlby's critical period


  An infant needed an attachment to develop in the first 2.5 years, otherwise it would be very difficult, if not impossible for it to develop afterward, leading to problems in later childhood and adulthood
• Rutter found that children kept in horrendous conditions with minimal contact with adults had limited ability to form attachments, but when adopted into stable homes, attachments did begin to form, even though some of these children were a lot older than the 2.5 years Bowlby discussed
• Bowlby's theory of the critical period was severely challenged
• Sensitive period


  It is ideal to attach in the first 2.5 years but it is not essential, it is possible to attach later
• Internal Working Model (IWM)


  An internal representation of how we see ourselves as well as how we expect others to react to us, formed in early childhood through interactions with the Primary Care Giver
• Early childhood relationships


  Have an impact on later relationships
• Secure attachment and IWM


  Infant feels loved by PCG and knows they are worthy of love, leading to a positive IWM and expectation of being treated well by others
• Insecure-avoidant attachment and IWM


  Infant feels ignored by caregiver, leading to an IWM of expecting rejection and having little self-worth, causing them to remain aloof and avoid close relationships
• Insecure-resistant attachment and IWM


  Infant believes they had to make a fuss to get attention, leading to an IWM of needing to be clingy and possessive to keep others interested, causing problems in later relationships
• Mary Main found a link between childhood attachment styles and adult attachment styles, supporting the IWM