Attachments - The effects of instituinalisation

Attachments - The effects of instituinalisation

1. Hodges and Tizard

   • aimed to investigate the effects of failure to form attachment (privation) on social and emotional development. testing Bowlby's hypothesis that lack of relatioinship between mother and infant cause permanent long time negative effects
     • 65 children in an instiutinalisation, no attachments as they had about 50 different carers
       • 24 children had been adopted and 15 restored
         • age 4 - institulanilation were more attention seeking and more indiscriminatly affectionate
           • age 8 - mot children had formed a close attachment with parents. children from both groups wee more attention seeking from adults (disinhibited attachment)
             • at age 16 - the adopted children were more closely attached than the restored children. all of the ex inst were less likely to have a speacial friend, be part of a crowd, or to be liked by other children. they were quarelsome and more likely to be like bullied
   • In conclusion
     • children given good quality, loving enviroments can recover and form attachments
       • gooes against bowlbys maternal deprivation theory
         • some support, because early privation had long term negative effects on children at 8 and 16
   • evaluation
     • The sample was small and more than 20 could only be found by the end, this means sample may be biased. hard to generalise
     • high validaty as its a naturally occuring situaion
     • cannot be certain that the iv causes the dv. the children selected for adoption could of been more attractive and socially able in the first place.