Bowlby's maternal deprivation hypothesis. To find out if children were deprived of their mother during the critical period of attachment of the first few years of their lives, could a serious range of permanent consequences happen for later development?

Findings:

He found that a large number, 86% of those thieves diagnosed as ‘affectionless psychopaths’ had experienced early and prolonged separations from their mothers, whereas very few of the non-psychopathic thieves or the other children had experienced such separations.

Conclusion:

Early separations may well be related to later emotional maladjustment.

Bowbly identified some of these children as ‘ affectionless psychopaths’ because they appeared to have little sense of social responsibility and showed no guilt for crimes. Other children referred to the clinic had not committed any crimes, they were emotionally maladjusted, but did not show any ant social behaviour.

Criticisms: 

• Data on separation was collected retrospectively and may not be reliable

• The evidence is correctional, which means that we can only say that separation and affectionless psychopaths are linked, not that one caused the other.

• Some of the children had actually been separated for rather short periods and it is difficult to see how they might be the cause of such a serious condition.

Study of the effects of institutional care – Tizard and Hodge’s (1989)

Aim:

To find out what the long-term effects of early institutionalisation are.

Procedure:

65 children placed in an institution before the age of four months. There was an explicit policy in the institution against caretakers forming attachments with the children. Some of the children remained in institution, some were adopted and other returned to their natural home.

Findings:

Early follow ups at the age 4 and 8 found that adopted children were doing best in virtually every way when compared to those that had returned home, although they were having more social and cognitive difficulties than a control group of children who had never been in care. This shows that some recovery is possible and that a child’s natural home may not be the best.

Conclusion:

At home the adopted children maintained good relationships because their parents presumably put a lot of effort into the relationship whereas in the bad homes the children had been rejected.

Criticisms:

Only some of the children were included in the final because of drop out.  The results then forma a biased sample.