To investigate to what extent loving and nurturing care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions.
PROCEDURE (Romanian study #1)
In a natural experiment they followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain to assess their physical, cognitive and emotional development at ages 4,6,11 and 15 years, making this a longitudinal study.
FINDINGS (Romanian study #1)
Intellectual delay, however it appears that damage to intellectual development as a result of institutionalisation can be recovered provided adoption takes place before the age of six months – the age at which attachments form & Disinhibited Attachment
