Institutionalisation

Institutionalisation

1. Definition: refers to children spending a period of time within an institution e.g. orphanages

2. Reactive Detachment Disorder

   • An extreme lack of sensitive responsiveness from a parent/other adult in early life
     • Unable to trust or love others (defence)
       • Isolated and very selfish and unable to understand the needs of others (can become sociopathic without a conscience)

3. Disinhibited Attachment

   • Children select attachment figures indiscriminately and behave in an overly familiar fashion with complete strangers
     • Caused by long periods of institutional care in early life,
     • Often have other behavioural disorders too including attention seeking

4. Hodges and Tizard (1989)

   • Longitudinal natural experiment
     • 65 children who had in institutional care before they were 4 months
       • Compared to a control group who had been raised by their family
       • No monotropy
     • At age of 4 - 24 adopted; 15 returned to biological parents; 26 stayed
       • Assessed for their development at 4, 8 and 16 using self-report measures
   • Between 8 and 16: adopted had closer attachments to adoptive parents than those who returned to bio parents
     • All children looked for adult attention, support and approval and were more likely to have problems making friends than those who had never been institutionalised. Therefore shows they had RDD or DA
   • Conclusion: early effects of privation/institutionalised care can be overcome if child has supportive environment as they could form strong attachments (against Bowlby's Critical Period). However, some consequences (e.g. developing social relationships) cannot easily be resolved

5. AO2

   • Longitudinal study
     • Susceptible to large drop outs, which may make the sample unrepresentative
       • 27 dropped out by age of 16
         • Could mean sample could be biased as remaining children may have experienced more negative consequences, decreases validity of findings
   • Naturalistic study therefore lacks reliability
     • Little control over EV which could affect findings
       • Making it difficult to replicate the study to check consistent results
   • Data collection methods criticised for being subjective, not an objective measurement
     • Use of self-report prone to social desirability
       • Participants could lie about their attachments, due to the sensitive nature of the topic, to present themselves in the best possible light
         • Lowers the validity
   • High ecological validity
     • Natural environment (no manipulation of the IV as the children naturally experienced institutional care)
       • Therefore can generalise findings beyond the study setting to real life cases of institutional care