Rutter investigated the effects of privation in Romanian orphans who had been brought to the UK after being raised in very poor institutions, having suffered extreme privation. Rutter found that from the children adopted from 6-12 months of age, 40% showed continuing mental deficits and impaired brain development. Deficits included autistic-like symptoms including a lack of guilt and inability to develop relationships. A follow up study showed at the age of 11 that while the orphan’s physical development had caught up quickly compared to the control group of UK adopted children, brain size caught up more slowly and while continuing improvement was still being shown, marked adverse cognitive effects were still present, suggesting that the consequences of privation aren’t completely irreversible. 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.
Describe and evaluate research into cross cultural variations in attachment In 1988, Van Ljzendoorn and Kroonenberg used an analysis of the Strange Situation to research cross-cultural patterns of attachment. They used the same procedure as Ainsworth of assessing attachment as it shows how not all infants are securely attached. They therefore found the same three types of attachment: Secure attachment, insecure resistant and insecure avoidant. One of the most significant findings was that there was a 1.5 x more varaiations with cultures then between cultures. Also they found that secure attachment was the normal attachment throughout each country.
Although this research has helped many psychologists (Erickson et al, Everett waters) with their experiments this one may not be very valid, because the results may not apply to infants with different cultures and beliefs, therefore we cannot generalize the results as it was only tested on middle-class US children. Another fault in the experiment was that it didn’t take into account the extraneous variables which may have
That is, the intra-cultural variation was nearly one-and-a-half times the cross-cultural variation. The weakness is it is an over-simplification to assume that all children are brought up in exactly the same way in a particular country or culture. The findings reflect on the way children are brought up. In Germany, even working mothers are rare; children are encouraged to be independent and self-reliant. Also, greater personal distance is the norm and proximity seeking is not encouraged.
60 middle-class Japanese infants 1 years old and their mothers were observed in the Strange Situation It was found that 68% of infants were classified as securely attached/ 32% as resistant-insecure / none were classified as avoidant-insecure The Japanese infants were extremely disturbed when left alone. This cultural variation can be explained in terms of different child care practices. In Japan, infants rarely experience separation from their mothers, which would explain why they were more distressed than the American counterparts. There are cross-cultural differences in the ways infants respond to separation. (AO1) Van ijzendoorn and kroonenberg suggests that the cross culteral similarities they found might be explained by the effects of mass media which spreads
Throughout the set up, the infants were judged on an intensity scale of 1-7 (1 being the lowest and 7 the highest) which described their behaviour. This was Ainsworth’s quantitative data, though some of the method was qualitative. When the mother left the room and returned, with the effect of the stranger, the infants’ behaviour showed that the infants could fall into 3 types of behaviour. Type B is ‘secure attachment’; this is when the infants found it stressful and unsettling when their mother left the room. They did not care about the stranger attempting to give the comfort.
This is an example of how Japan originally culturally defied western influence, and did not defy with violence as India did. Western imperialism had a lot of influence and changed the way the world developed. India and Japan eventually gave in to Westernization after they first resisted control. However, India resisted through physical efforts while Japan resisted through cultural
In Japan a higher proportion of children are classified as ambivalent and a lower proportion of children are classified as avoidant than in Western European and American cultures. Japanese infants are more likely to be very upset during separations from their caregivers and less likely to explore the environment than American infant; this is because Japan encourages dependence rather than independence, unlike America. Based on this data and using the Japanese culture as an example, Rothbaum and his colleagues argued that caregiver sensitivity in Japan is a function of parents' efforts to maintain high levels of emotional closeness with their children, but that in the United States it is a function of parents' efforts to balance emotional closeness with children's assumed need to become self-sufficient. In fact, Japanese parents spend more time in close contact with their infants than parents in the United States. Regardless, most attachment researchers now agree that caregiver sensitivity is only one important contributor to attachment security.
This data might be inconsistent because “girls tend to exhibit aggression more covertly. Girls may use verbal, rather than physical, aggression, often excluding others or spreading rumors about another child” (Hamilton & Armando, 2008, 861). Another risk factor is coexisting conditions. ADHD is the most common condition that can coexist with oppositional defiant disorder . In a study called Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD, “researchers found that 40 percent of children with ADHD also meet diagnostic criteria for oppositional defiant disorder “ (Hamilton & Armando, 2008, 863).
Nature versus nurture is one of the many questions scientists and theorists try to understand. Basically, is it genetics, the environment or a culmination of one or more contributing factors? According to some studies, not only genetics can contribute but many other variables like classic conditioning, family dynamics, environment and a whole plethora of things. For example, “Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterized by inattention, impulsiveness, and hyperactivity inappropriate for the child’s age. Research has shown that ADHD is more prevalent in boys and runs in families, apparently for both genetic and environmental reasons” (R. Kolwalski, D. Westen, 2011).