Institutionalisation JWI

Question 1

What is institutionalisation?

Answer 1

the effects of living in an institutional setting (i.e. outside of the family or family home) e.g. hospital, orphanage, where children live for long, continuous periods of time. There is often very little emotional care provided. Institutionalisation results in the child adopting the rules and norms of the institution that can impair functioning. It has been theorised that the effects of institutionalisation are irreversible.

Question 2

What are the effects of institutionalisation?

Answer 2

• Physical underdevelopment
• Intellectual under-functioning
• Disinhibited attachment – a form of insecure attachment where children are equally friendly and affectionate towards people they know well and strangers. They may also be attention-seeking and clingy. It is thought that this is an adaptation to living with multiple caregivers during the sensitive period of attachment formation. In poor quality institutions, a child may have 50 carers, none of whom they see enough to form a secure attachment.
• Poor parenting – a study by Quinton et al. (1984) compared a group of 50 women who had been reared in institutions (children’s homes) with a control group of 50 women reared at home. When the women were in their 20s, it was found that the ex-institutional women were experiencing extreme difficulties as parents. For example, more of them had children who spent time in care.
• Emotional functioning – children in institutional care sometimes show affectionless psychopathy as identified by Bowlby, and are more likely to have temper tantrums.
• Lack of internal working model – children in institutional care may have difficulty interacting with peers and forming close relationships
• Quasi-autism – children in institutional care sometimes have difficulty understanding the meaning of social contexts and may display obsessional behaviour

Question 3

Who did Rutter et al study?

Answer 3

Rutter et al. followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain to test to what extent good care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions. The orphans had spent their early lives in Romanian institutions and so suffered from the effects of institutionalisation. Of this group, 111 were adopted before the age of two, and a further 54 by the age of 4. Physical, cognitive and emotional development were assessed at ages 4, 6, 11 and 15 years (longitudinal study). Information was also gathered in interviews with parents and teachers. A group of 52 children adopted around the same time in Britain served as a control group. These children were adopted before the age of six months.

Question 4

What were the children like at adoption?

Answer 4

the Romanian orphans lagged behind their British counterparts on all measures. They were smaller, weighed less and showed signs of intellectual disability disorder. By the age of four, some of the children had caught up with their British counterparts. This was true for almost all of the Romanian children adopted before the age of six months.

Question 5

What were they like in the UK

Answer 5

When they first arrived in the UK, half of the adoptees showed signs of intellectual disability disorder, and the majority were severely malnourished. At age 11, the adopted children showed differential rates of recovery that were related to their age of adoption. The mean IQ of those adopted before the age of six months was 102, compared with 86 for those adopted between six months and two years, and 77 for those adopted after two years. These differences remained at age 16.

Question 6

What did they conclude?

Answer 6

In terms of attachment, there appeared to be a difference in outcome related to whether adoption took place before or after six months. Those children adopted after they were six months old showed signs of disinhibited attachment. Symptoms include attention-seeking, clinginess and social behaviour directed indiscriminately towards all adults (familiar and strangers). In contrast, those adopted before the age of six months rarely displayed disinhibited attachment.

Question 7

RWA

Answer 7

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. For example, 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. Having a key worker means that the children have the chance to develop normal attachments and helps avoid disinhibited attachment.

This suggests that the research has been immensely valuable in practical terms (as such children will then be more successful in relationships later on, meaning fewer pressures on mental health services etc.), supporting its external validity.

Question 8

Weakness of the study (conditions)

Answer 8

It is possible that the conditions were so bad that the results cannot be applied to understanding the impact of better quality institutional care or any situation where children experience deprivation. For example, Romanian orphanages had particularly poor standards of care, especially when it came to forming any relationship with the children, and extremely low levels of intellectual stimulation.

The unusual situational variables mean that the study may lack external validity and so tells us less about the effects of institutionalisation than previously thought.

Question 9

Weakness of the study (random)

Answer 9

The children were not randomly allocated to conditions. The researchers did not interfere with the adoption process, which may mean that the more sociable children were adopted early and so their sociability acted as a confounding variable.

This compromises the internal validity of the conclusions about the effects of institutionalisation because we cannot determine cause and effect.
Counterargument: however, this makes the study more ethical as they didn’t deliberately interfere with the adoption process.

Question 10

Undermining evidence

Answer 10

One of the findings from the Romanian study was that at the last assessment, a lower number of children had disinhibited attachment. It may be that the effects of institutionalisation do disappear over time if children have good-quality emotional care. It may be that ex-institutional children need more time than normal to mature sufficiently and learn to cope with relationships.

The theory implies that the effects may be irreversible, but these findings suggest this may not be true and so the effects of institutionalisation may lack validity.