When they were discovered they had no speech, were terrified of people and had serious health problems. They were taken to a special school for children with learning difficulties for intense rehabilitation and they were adopted by two sisters who provided a strong emotional bond with the new family. After a final study took place they found that they twins had attained average intelligence and had developed into happy and sociable boys who then attended mainstream school.
This shows that they were able to overcome the effects of privation, and that the initial sensitive period which Bowlby first introduced were false as they were able to develop into a mentally stable boys even though they formed an attachment much later on in life.
In comparison to this the Skuse sisters, also suffered extreme social and emotional privation in early childhood. Their mother had severe learning difficulties and also may have had a mental illness. Children were kept in a small room, and tied to the bed. When they were noisy they were covered with a blanket. The children were found by social services aged, Louise aged 3 ½ and Mary aged 2 ½, they were put into a children’s hospital. They showed very little signs of speech and very little evidence of play, but following speech therapy, Louise developed normal language skills and began to attend a primary school at the age of 5. Mary did not develop language skills and had to be moved to a ward for acoustic children.
This would suggest that although they had lived in the same environment that their must be other factors effecting he sisters, based on personal characteristics and how each child deals with the situation.
A study by Hodges and Tizard (1989) based on Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis suggested that a discontinued relationship between a mother-figure and infant would result in emotional maladjustment. But they found that some research evidence indicated that some children can and do recover from early deprivation – this may not be the case with privation. So to test this they followed group of children from early life to adolescence. There study focused on a group of 65 children who had been placed in an institution when they were less than 4 months old. The children had not yet formed an attachment and were unable to form an attachment with the staff as the staffs were discouraged from doing so. Early study’s found that 70 per cent of the children were unable to care deeply about someone. This shows that the children have suffered severe privation. By the age of 4, 24 of the children had been adopted, 15 had returned home and the rest remained at the institution. At different periods the children were assessed to see how they were progressing or if they were suffering privation. The study found that at the age of four the institutional caretakers reported that the children did not have any deep relationships. The children in general were more attention-seeking and more indiscriminately affectionate than non-institutional children. At the age of 8 most of the ex-institutional children had formed attachments with their parents or adopted parents the children’s teacher did although report that the ex institutional children still tended to be attention-seeking and also more over friendly then ‘normal’ peers. Finally at the age of 16 they found that the relationship with the family in general the adopted children were as closely attached as the control group, whereas the restored group were less likely to be closely attached. With their peer relationships all the ex institutional adolescences were less likely to have a special friend, to be part of a crowd or to be liked by other children.
Their conclusions were that at the age of 4 and 8 suggests that the children already showed signs of permanent damage due to the institutionalisation as a child. At 16 it suggests that privation had a negative effect to have the ability to form relationships. The adopted children seemed fine at home but not in peer relationships which suggest that they haven’t fully recovered from their early privation as they found it harder to form relationships.
