Flashcards
Failure to form attachment
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- 1Tizard and Hodges > Longitudinal study on 65 UK children put into institutional care under 4 months with no attachment. > By 4 24 were adopted, 15 went back to natural homes. > Also a control group raised at home so they could compare. > Children assessed when they were 4, 8 and 16. > All 4 year olds showed signs of disinhibited attachment and at they age of 8 and 16 adoptive children formed a close attachment with their new families.Evaluation:
> Longitudinal so people can drop out at any point, in this study there were 49 left by the age of 16.
> Individual differences.
> Privation may only be one factor in explaining the long-term negative effects. - 2Rutter > Longitudinal stufy on 165 Romanian orphans who had been adopted by UK families. > Assessed when they were 4, 6, 11 and 15. > Control group of UK adopted children. > Children adopted by UK families before 6 months showed normal emotional development . 1/3 of those adopted after 6 months showed signs on disinhibited attachment and some still showed this at the age of 11. > This shows that lack of attachment after 6 months is linked to long-term social and emotional difficulties.Evaluation:
> Support Bowlby's idea of sensitive period. However, 25% didn't show disturbances which suggests that there are individual differences.
> Findings contradict T&H's study. - 3Genie> Locked in a room isolated and physically restrained until 13.
> When found she could not speak or stand up right.
> Never fully recovered despite being placed with a loving foster family and thought this was due to extreme early privation. Other suggestions are that the age she was found was past Bowlby's sensitive period. - 4Czech Twins> Mother tied them with dog lead as she had learning difficulties.
> When found at 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 they could not talk or play.
> Fostered into normal family but one developed normal language etc. whilst the other had poor language and when to an autistic school. - 5General evaluation for case studies> Some do and some do not recover from privation.
> Although there is a lot of in depth info it cannot be generalised as it is about an individual who may have unique characteristics. - 6Deprivation dwarfism> Children who do not form an attachment are often very small. Genie was locked in her room until she was 13 and was the size of an 8 year old.
> Gardner reviewed case studies and found one girl had been fed through a tube since birth and her mother never cuddled her as she was afraid of dislodging the tube. By 8 months the girl was physically small and was emitted to a hospital where she had a lot of attention and love, even though her diet was the same. This shows that having an attachment to someone because they do not have love can make them physically small. - 7Difficulty forming friendships> T&H study found that children who did not form attachment were unpopular at school and showed signs of disinhibited attachment. This shows being in an institution from a young age can have long-term negative effects in forming friendships.
- 8Poor parenting> Harlow showed in his study on monkeys that those who formed no attachment became poor parents themselves and had difficulty getting on with other monkeys.
> Quinton found women who had been in a children's home when they were younger lacked warmth and interacting with their own children. - 9Disinhibited attachment> Rutter studied a small group of Romanian orphans adopted by UK families and found those adopted after 6 months had problems with social relationships in later life and signs of disinhibited attachment disorder like being over friendly with adults and attention seeking.
- 10Evaluation> Most research on privation and institutionalisation show recovery is not possible. However, some research does show recovery e.g. Czech twins.
> Some methodological problems e.g. we cannot be certain that the children studied failed to form an attachment e.g. T&H study we assume that no children made an attachment but they could have and their problems were due to feeling rejected.
> We do not know what happened to children in later life, we do know that Czech twins looked as if they recovered but the study was not controlled.
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- A-Level Psychology (Attachment) Flashcards on Failure to form attachment, created by charlotteruddy on 13/04/2015.
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