Despite these children being able to form attachments, it appears that there are long lasting effects of privation in some children, For example the teachers admitted that the children were still attention seeking and they were unable to make special friendships at 16. To a large extent we could also argue that the effects of privation may last just as the effects of deprivation do. For example, Bowlby’s (1944) indicated that most of those who were diagnosed as affectionless psychopaths had experienced frequent early separations. In this sense the effects of deprivation and privation are similar.
However we can not rely on Bowlby’s findings because it is possible that he may be biased in identifying the affectionless psychopaths as he made the diagnosis himself. Furthermore, one weakness of research into maternal deprivation is that the data used was gathered retrospectively, which means participants are relying on memory. However research into memory has shown that memory is not always accurate. Furthermore, parents who were interviewed in Bolwby’s study may have the desire to present themselves in a good light therefore they may lie, which in turn reduces the reliability of such data.
Similarly one weakness of Hodges and Tizard’s study is that the original sample was reduced ( attrition) and it may be that those who dropped are systematically different to those who remained. For example they could have been the ones who were more troubled. This in turn threatens validity of the study.
On the other hand, From Hodges and Tizard’s findings, we can see that early institutional care and lack of close attachment did not have severely damaging effects. In contrast, Bowlby (1956) showed that children who experienced early prolonged separation from their mothers had the same intellectual development as others. In this case, we could suggest that there are also significant differences in the effects of privation and deprivation on development.
Evidence has shown that early years of privation can severely limit child’s full development. For example the case of Genie showed that even after she has been rescued from extreme isolation, she still could not speak and lacked social responsiveness, therefore full recovery was not possible. Using this others have argued that the effects of privation are worse than that of deprivation. However we could also criticise this view as we do not have sufficient evidence to show that Genie never had an attachment, thus it is possible that she may have had formed a relationship with her mother. If this is the case then it is deprivation rather than privation.
Similarly, Skeels and Dye illustrated that children who were placed in institutions scored poorly on intelligence tests. However, it is quite difficult to establish the extent to which deprivation caused poor performance In Skeels and Dye study as it may be possible that other factors such as individual differences may also account for this rather than deprivation. Furthermore, it is also difficult to establish whether the children they studied were initially deprived or it was privation.
Although evidence show that there are important differences in the effects of privation and deprivation, we do not have enough evidence to actually show that these children where are not attached to someone on during sensitive years or not. For this reason it is difficult to reach any firm conclusions on the differences in their effects.
