Effects of institutionalisation

• What is institutionalisation?

  This refers to the effects of institutions such as orphanages have on the development of children.
• At what age interval were the children tested?

  4, 6, 11 and 15
• What was observed during the Romanian Orphans Study (2010)?

  Their physical, social and cognitive development
• Throughout the study what were the orphans compared to?

  A control group of 52 British children that were adopted before the age of 6
• What did Rutter and Sonuga Barke (2010) find out about the Romanian orphans?

  Initially 50% of them had cognitive issues and were underweight however after the age of 4 they showed great improvements and later on some of them even caught up with the British Control group.
• What did Rutter and Sonuga Barke (2010) find out about the British control group?


  They did not display the deficits that the Romanian Orphans did.
• What conclusions did Rutter and Sonuga Barke (2010) make from their findings?

  That the negative effects of institutionalisation could be overcome through sensitive care and the fact that the British children had no deficits suggests that separation alone does not cause development issues.
• What did Rutter find in his follow-up study?

  That issues with attachment and cognition could be linked to institutionalization.
• However what factors did Rutter find that were not linked to insitutionalisation

  Emotional problems such as peer relationship issues
• what conclusion was made from Rutter's follow-up study?

  That only specific effects are related to long term institutional care and that it varied from person to person, so individual differences also play a part.
• Why may research into institutional care effects suffer from cultural bias?

  A lot of research was conducted in Romania where the institutions were under-funded suggesting that this was the main cause for why the children suffered and so the findings may not be applicable to other countries with more resources.
• If research into institutional care has real world applications then what does this mean?

  That the research has mundane realism and this increases its validity.
• What is a strength of the procedure that Rutter and Sonuga-Barke (2010) used?

  They used a longitudinal study
• Why is it a strength that Rutter and Sonuga-Barke (2010) study was longitudinal?

  It was accurate as it followed the children's lives as they grew up meaning that although it took much longer it lead to more reliable data
• If deprivation is only one factor then what does this mean?

  That the damage only occurs when there are multiple risk factors and this shows a limitation of the current research which mainly focuses on deprivation.
• How does Bowlby's theory support this?

  His theory of maternal deprivation supports the idea of the importance of early attachment and how that can affect later behaviours.
• What does this then tell us about Rutter and Sonuga-Barke (2010) study?

  That it is reliable as other research also came to similar conclusions