RUTTER PLAN

Question 1

A01

Answer 1

• Rutter distinguished between privation and deprivation.
• Privation is never having formed an attachment.
• Deprivation is the loss of an attachment.
• In the context of attachment institutionalisation refers to the effects of growing up in an orphanage, and children adopting the norms of values of the institution resulting in a loss of identity and impaired social skills.
• Many Romanian parents couldn’t afford to keep their children and consequently many children ended up in huge orphanages- due to the obligation of having to have 5 children.
• Some of the effects of institutionalisation are: Delayed intellectual development and disinhibited attachment.
• Delayed intellectual development states that Intellectual development can be damaged asaresult of institutionalisation.
• (However, most of the children who are adopted before the age of 6 months can catch up with the control group by the age of 4).
• Disinhibited attachment: - Children are equally friendly and affectionate towards people they know as well as strangers

Question 2

Rutter

Answer 2

• Rutter in fact wanted to test to what extent good care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions.
• He followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain.
• physical , cognitive and emotional development was assessed at ages 4, 6, 11 and 15 years.
• A group of 52 British children adopted around the same time have served as a control group

Question 3

One limitation of research into romanian orphans is that they were unaware of the long term impact of it.

Answer 3

• For example, The adopted orphans in the ERA study were only followed into their mid-teens. This means that we are unable to see the long term effects and if the effects are temporary or not.
• Our brains don’t stop growing until 20-25 years old, so there’s a possibility that the orphans may have caught up intellectually soon after.
• Therefore, we can’t be confident that these effects of institutionalisation are forever.
• This is a disadvantage as it’s a limited explanation as it hasn’t been studied longitudinally.

Question 4

One limitation of research into romanian orphans is that it lacks adequate control.

Answer 4

• For example, The ERA was a natural experiment.
• The researchers did not interfere with the adoption process, children were not randomly allocated to the ’conditions’.
• This means the children who were adopted may have been more sociable as people would often choose babies who were more sociable to adopt amongst the thousands there.
• This is a disadvantage as it may be a confounding variable.
• They may not have had any
  issues when they were older as they were naturally sociable, and thus not shown any effects of institutionalisation.
• However, in Rutter’s study the children were too young to suffer from trauma before institutionalisation thus this reduces it being confounded by trauma or loss

Question 5

One limitation of research into romanian orphans is that findings from the study are not generalisable

Answer 5

• as the Romanian orphans are not typical to the ones around the world.
• For example, Romanian orphanages had particularly poor standards of care and unusually low levels of intellectual stimulation.
• This is because there were thousands of orphans and so had to be put in rooms with hundreds of beds in rows.
• This means the effects of institutionalisation may not be due to institutionalisation, but in fact a lack of intellectual stimulation.
• This is a disadvantage as it assumes that everyone who would be in these orphanages suffer from disinhibited attachment and delayed intellectual development.
• Yet, this depends on the quality of care at the orphanage, not the fact that they were at an orphanage.