Romanian orphan studies

• These concern children placed in care because their parents cannot look after them. An orphan is a child whose parents have either died or have abandoned them permanently.
• Institutionalisation: A term for the effects of living in an institutional setting. The term 'institution' refers to a place like a hospital or an orphanage where children live for long, continuous periods of time. In such places there is often very little emotional care provided. In attachment research we are interested in the effects of institutional care on children's attachment and subsequent development.
• Research on maternal deprivation has turned to orphan studies as a means of studying the effects of deprivation on emotional and intellectual development. A tragic opportunity to look at the effects of institutional care and the consequent institutionalisation arose inRomania in the 1990s. Former President Nicolai Ceaucescu required Romanian women to have five children. Many Romanian parents could not afford to keep their children and the children ended up in huge orphanages in very poor conditions. After the 1989 Romanian revolution many of the children were adopted, some by British parents.
• Rutter et al Aim: compared Romanian orphans who were adopted by UK families with UK born adoptees to assess the extent to which attachments were affected by privation and to see the extent to which attachment types can change
• Rutter et al procedure: Rutter et al conducted an experiment on 165 Romanian children previously lived in institutions) of these 11l adopted before the oge of 2 and 54 adopted by the age of 4. They were compared to 52 British children adopted by the age of & months. The children were tested regularly for physical, social and cognitive development at the ages of 4,6,11,15.
• Rutter et al findings: They found that at the time of adoption, the Romanian children were behind the British children in all three aspects. Cognitively they were classified as mentally retarded. By 4, most of the Romanian children who had been adopted by the age of 6 months had caught up with the British children. Many of the children adopted after the age of 6 months showed disinhibited attachment and had difficulties with peer relationships.
• The effects of institutionalisation are disinhibited attachment: The child doesn't seem to prefer his or her parents over other people, even strangers. The child seeks comfort and attention from virtually anyone.Mental retardation: in Rutter's study most children showed signs of retardation when they arrived in Britain. It appears that damage to intellectual development due to inst/tion can be recovered if adoption takes place before the age of 6 months- the age at which attachments form.
• strength: findings from studying the effects of institutionalisation on them have led to real-world applications. Studying the Romanian orphans has enhanced our understanding of the effects of institutionalisation. Such results have led to improvements in the way children are cared for in institutions (Langton, 2006). Orphanages and children's homes now avoid having large numbers of caregivers for each child and instead ensure that a much smaller number of people, perhaps only one or two, play a central role for the child. This person is called a key worker. .
• Continuing strength: real world application Having a key worker means children have the chance to develop normal attachments and helps avoid disinhibited attachment. This shows that research has been immensely valuable in practical terms
• strength of Rutter et als research is that their research was longitudinal. Their research took place over many years allowing them to assess both the short-term and long-term effects of institutionalisation and subsequent benefits from adoption. As a result cause and effect in relation to the link between institutionalisation and its effects could be established.
• Continuing strength: Rutter et al research was longitudinal

  Therefore, the results of their research appear to be a valid representation of the effects of being placed in institutional care as well as portraying the results of receiving quality follow-on emotional caregiving in a timely manner.
• A criticism of Romanian orphan research is that deprivation is only one factor in development. The orphans experienced very little or no mental stimulation and were often malnourished. This suggests there are multiple risk factors involved in ascertaining the effects of institutional care. Therefore, it is difficult to interpret the results of studies as the sole effect of deprivation as there are many different influences that affected these children, such as living in poverty.
• One of the methodological strengths for Rutter's ERA project was the fact that it was high in ecological validity. This is because all the orphans were studied in their real environment. Also, the psychologists didn't manipulate any of the conditions, ie didn't decide which of the children were going to be adopted earlier or later. They were just observing the children's behaviour. This is a strength as the results from this project can be generalised to other children who have been institutionalised.