Effects of institutionalisation adoptees project

What is an institute

A place where someone lives outside of the family home and you day to day life is controlled

Romania history

• communist country

• Abortion and contraception was banned so too many children

• In 1989 the government got overthrown and the world became aware of the orphanages

Rutter et al aim

To investigate whether good care could make up for poor early experiences in an institution

Rutter procedure

• followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain

• Measured PIES at ages 4,6,11 and 15

• A group of 52 British children adopted around the same time served as a control group

Rutter findings

• those adopted after 6 months showed disinhibited attachment

• The later they were adopted the lower their IQ

What was the average IQ of the children adopted at 6 months or younger

102

What was the mean IQ of those adopted between 6 months and 2 years

86

What was the mean IQ of those adopted after 2 years old

77

Zeanah

• assessed 95 children ages 12-31 months who spent 90% of their lives in Romanian orphanages

• Compared to 50 children who had never been in an institution

• Used the strange situation to measure attachment type

Zeanah findings

• 74% of control group were securely attached compared to 19% of the institutionalised group

• 65% of institutionalised were showing disinhibited attachment

Strengths of effects of institutionalisation

• real life application

• Fewer extraneous variables

How does it have real life applications

the Romanian adoptees project has given knowledge on how to raise children without parents so now there’s a ratio between carers to number of children

Fewer extraneous variables

• all the children in the orphanages would have experienced the same trauma which means it’s espalier to measure because there will be one level of trauma rather than different levels in they were all in different homes

What a the limitations

• the adoptees weren’t typical

• Methodological limitations

How were the adoptees not typical

The conditions of the orphanages were so much worse than usual orphanages it can be difficult to generalise to other orphanages

What were the methodological issues

Due to it being a natural study you can be sure that the independent variable measured was the one that had the most effect e.g. better development could’ve been due to better nutrition in the early years compared to better care