Romanian orphan studies

• What are the 2 romanian orphan studies?

  Rutter et al , Zeanah et al
• Rutter et al ( ERA study ) found that average IQ was 102 for children adopted before they were 6 months old and average IQ was 77 for children adopted after they were 2 years old , and children adopted after 6 months old showed disinhibited attachments
• Zeanah et al ( BED project ) assessed attachment type of children in institutional care , 19% were securely attached and 44% had disinhibited attachments
• Disinhibited attachment is when a child is equally affectionate to familiar and unfamiliar people
• What are the evaluation points for Romanian orphan studies?

  Strength - application to social care , social care tries to have one or two key workers per child , more effort is made for fostering rather than institutionalisation

  Strength - there is a lack of confounding variables in the research , in Romania the children were orphaned because of money so have less negative early childhood experiences , so the research has high internal validity

  Weakness - ERA study only studies up to mid 20s currently , so we do not know the long term effects of institutionalisation