Interestingly in the Rutter study those who were adopted before the age of 6 months tended to show a more marked improvement compared to their older counterparts. This seems to coincide with Schaffer and Emerson’s Glaswegian infant study which showed that children below the age of 6 months treat everything indiscriminately having not formed an attachment. So naturally by definition the Romanian infants below 6 months couldn’t and didn’t suffer privation and so therefore didn’t suffer the effects of it later. However with the Rutter study it is hard to establish cause and effect. Many of the children suffered cognitive deficits but this might have rather been a result of a lack of substantial intellectual stimulation within the institutions as opposed to privation.
It is clear that postnatal maternal depression can impair maternal care and may be associated with delayed social, behavioral, cognitive, and physical development in growing children. There also is evidence that adolescent children of depressed fathers are likelier to experience psychopathology. This longitudinal cohort study, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), postulated that paternal depression postnatally would be associated with a heightened risk of behavioral and emotional problems at age 3.5 years. Participants included 13,351 mothers and 12,884 fathers, all of them evaluated 8 weeks postnatally using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). The fathers were again assessed when their children were 21 months old.
However this study can be criticised because of its retrospective analysis after the disorder had developed, thus it may be more conclusive if a prospective study was conducted to show the ‘before and after’ effects within families. Tienari et al found the risk of developing schizophrenia was 4 times greater in adopted children with biological mothers with schizophrenia than those with ‘healthy’ parents. This again shows a strong genetic link absent of overriding environmental factors. However
Early studies found that 70% were unable to show feelings towards anyone. The children were assessed regularly and some of the children had even left due to adoption or they had been reunited with their families. Hodges and Tizard found that the children who had been reunited with their families were less likely to form attachments with their mothers; however the adopted children were as closely attached to their parents as ‘normal’ children. On the other hand, both groups did have problems with peers as they struggled to make secure friendships. This shows that privation had an effect on the children and had affected their ability to form attachments.
They measured emotional and social competence at ages 4, 8 and 16. The study found that at the children who were restored to their real parents were less likely to have formed attachments with their original families, but adopted children were as closely attached to their adoptive parents as the control group. However both the groups of ex-institutionalised children had problems with peer relationships. These findings suggest that their early privation had a negative effect on the ability to form relationships. This supports bowlby’s theory that failure to form attachments has an irreversible effect on emotional development.
The first explanation of phobias is the genetic explanation, which argues that phobias are hereditary. Most if the family studies conducted by researchers have found that relatives of those with phobias are more likely to suffer phobias themselves compared with relatives of non-phobic controls. A twin study by Slater and Shields 1969 found 41% concordance in 17MZ twin pairs versus 4% in 28 DZ twin pairs for any type of anxiety disorder. However even though studies have proven to support the genetic problems there are a number of difficulties with family studies. The main problem is that in most cases family members share the same environment so it can be argued that it was the environment that caused them to equally learn the behaviour instead of the genetic relationship.
This supports Bowlby's theory of sensitive period. There was another study conducted by Stout, Stout conducted a study of Romanian orphans who had experienced severe conditions and found that they later suffered permanent psychological damage, including no ability to interact with people and increased aggression. Psychologists successfully showed the impacts of institutionalisation; a strength of Hodges and Tizards study was that it was longitudinal so the researchers were able to see how the institution affected the children over many years. However a weakness of this longitudinal method involves attrition, where many of the children may have left the study because they were well adjusted, therefore resulting in a biased remaining sample - children with pleasant behaviour are more likely to be adopted. Some research suggests that individuals who do not form a primary attachment within the early sensitive period are unable to recover, however, in the study of romanian orphans, one third recovered well therefore privation alone cannot explain negative outcomes.
They believe that securely attached infants would become autonomous adults; these know the importance of their past relationships and can recall positive and negative experiences. Those that had insecure attachments would fall into the dismissing or preoccupied category. They would see their childhood experiences as either unimportant and dismiss them or as important but cannot resolve issues. Using the AAI, Hamilton (1994) studied 30 adolescents and found a strong correlation between infant attachment type and adult attachment type. Similarly Steinberg (1990) found that securely attached adolescents were more likely to maintain healthy relationships with their parents than those classified as dismissive or preoccupied.
2. Parker and Carranza: P: Compared primary school children and college students in their ability to identify a target individual after a slide sequence of a mock crime F: Child witnesses had a higher rate of choosing that adults but they were more likely to make errors C: Concludes that children aren’t more accurate witnesses than adults The following research has looked and the elderly and the accuracy of eye witness testimony: 3. Cohen and Faulkner: * They showed 70 year olds and 35 year olds a film of a kidnapping * Then presented them with misleading details before asking them to recall what happened in the film. F: They found that the 70 years olds were more likely to be mislead than the 35 years old. C: Therefore, this research would suggest that people of an old age do not have accurate eye witness testimony.
Insecure attachment as a causative factor leading to depression symptoms in adolescents In Australia it is believed that around 20% of adolescents will have experienced significant symptoms of depression and about 5% severe enough to require extensive treatment (National Health and Medical Research Council. Depression in Young People: Clinical Practice Guidelines. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997). In an attempt to identify and understand the development of depression in adolescence, cognitive- interpersonal approaches in particular attachment theory have been used, (Lee & Hankin, 2009). With past studies having indicated a significant correlation between attachment and the development of depressive problems in adolescence