Failure to attach- Privation

Failure to attach- Privation

1. Privation and institutionalisation

   • Hodges and Tizard (1989)
     • carried out a longitudinal study of 65 children who were placed in an institution before 4 months of age
     • The institution policy was for staff not to form special relationships with the children, so it was likely that they had all experienced privation
     • they were followed up at 4, 8 and 16 years of age and compared to control groups of children living with their families
     • at 4 years, 15 of the institutionalised children had been restored to their families, and 24 had been adopted
     • when the children were 8, interviews were carried out with mothers (occasionally with fathers present) and, when they were 16, with the children themselves
     • Teachers and peers completed a battery of questionnaires
       • the main findings were as follows:
         • compared to control groups, adopted and restored children tended to seek attention from, and be overfriendly towards, adults rather than peers. They were more approval-seeking and less popular with peers
         • restored children were less likely than adopted children to have a special friend
         • compared to restored children, adopted children tended to have closer, more harmonious family relationships and were more likely to show physical affection towards parents
     • it was concluded that adopted and restored children generally did not fare as well as controls, while restored children had more difficulties than adopted children. This supports Bowlby's (1944) views on the importance of forming an attachment bond
   • a natural experiment
     • Hodges and Tizard's study is a natural experiment, which overcomes the fact that it would be ethically unacceptable deliberately to manipulate children's attachment opportunities
     • cause and effect can be inferred from such studies, but, because there are fewer controls than in a laboratory experiment, there may be more experimental 'noise' obscuring the effect of the IV and, hence, less confidence in the conclusions drawn
   • individual differences
     • Hodges and Tizard were unable to control who was selected to be restored or adopted; it is possible that there were already differences between these groups that could have acted as a confounding variable
       • for example, children who were selected for adoption might already have been better adjusted or temperamentally more sociable compared to those not chosen, and this might have been the reason for their better progress than their circumstances
   • family environment
     • another possible confounding variable is that the family environments may not have been equivalent
       • Adoptive families were more likely to be highly motivated to provide a home for a child and invest in parenting
       • restored children were more likely to be returning to difficult circumstances- the reason for their institutionalisation in the first place
       • adopted children might, therefore, have had a better chance of repairing the effects of privation than restored children, for whom the situation might have been more unpredictable
   • small sample size but rich data
     • in some of the comparisons made by Hodges and Tizard, the sample size was very small
       • this is inevitable given the number of participants and could make the conclusions less reliable
         • this is somewhat compensated for, however, by the rich and detailed data collected in the interviews exploring many facets of the children's family and social lives

2. Privation and isolation

   • irreversible damage
     • Curtiss (1977) reported on the case of Genie, who had been isolated, imprisoned and neglected by her father until the age of 13
       • her development then resembled that of a 6 year old, and her social and language skills remained severely retarded in spite of good fostering and attempts to teach her
         • this suggests that the effects of privation can be irreversible
   • recovery is possible
     • Koluchova (1972) studied Czech twin boys whose mother died in 1960 when they were born
       • they were cared for by a children's agency, and then an aunt, before going to live, at 18 months of age, with their father and stepmother, who isolated and severely neglected them
       • when they were discovered, aged 7 years, they were retarded intellectually, physically, socially and emotionally
         • at the age of 8 years, they were fostered by 2 sisters whose high-quality care enabled them to recover, so that, by the age of 14, they were in mainstream school and had normal IQs
           • in adulthood, they married and had families, and neither of them seemed to suffer long-term adverse effects
             • this suggests that adverse early experience can be overcome even if the sensitive period of attachment is missed
   • timing is important
     • Rutter et al (2007) carried out a longitudinal study of Romanian orphans who suffered privation until being adopted
       • those who were adopted before 6 months developed normally as a comparison group of UK adopted children when followed up at 4, 6 and 11 years of age
         • those adopted after 6 months, however, showed indiscriminate attachments to adults and had problems relating to peers, suggesting that the timing of intervention can affect a child's prognosis