Hodges and Tizard (1989): Attachment Research Study

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Hodges, J. & Tizard, B. (1989) Social and family relationships of ex-institutional adolescents. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 30, 77-97.

Aims

To investigate the effect of institutional upbringing on later attachments.
To investigate the effects of privation on later social and emotional development.
To investigate if the effects of privation can be reversed.

Procedure

Jill Hodges and Barbara Tizard (1989) followed the development of 65 children in residential nurseries from only a few months old.

This longitudinal study (lasting 12 years from ages 4 – 16 yrs) used interviews and questionnaires.

All of these children had been taken into care before they were six months old and had stayed there until they were at least two years old

The independent variable (what happened to the children at age 4) occurred naturally.

24 children were adopted,
15 returned to their natural homes (restored),
26 stayed in the institution. The institutional care provided was of good quality, but carers were discouraged from forming attachments with the children (i.e., privation occurred).

The 3 groups were also compared with a control group, who had spent all their lives with their own families. The control group was closely matched to the children in the experimental group.

For example, in terms of sibling number, home location (London), parental occupation, birth order in the family, age, gender, etc.

Dependent variables

The children were assessed for social and emotional competence at four, eight, and sixteen years old. The assessment comprised interviews with the children, their parents, and their teachers and a set of questionnaires.

The main dependent variables were:

Attachment relationships: The quality and patterns of attachment between the children and their caregivers or adopted parents.
Social competence: The children’s ability to establish and maintain relationships with peers, as well as their social skills and understanding.
Emotional well-being: The children’s mental health, self-esteem, and the presence of emotional difficulties or disorders.
Indiscriminate friendliness: The degree to which the children displayed non-selective, overly friendly behaviors towards unfamiliar adults.
Empathy: The children’s ability to understand and respond to the emotions of others.
Peer and romantic relationships (at age 16): The quality and problems in the children’s relationships with peers and romantic partners during adolescence.

Findings

Age 4

At four years of age, none of the institutionalized or adopted children had formed attachments.

The social and intellectual development of adopted children was better than that of children returned to their families.

Those who returned to their natural families (restored) showed more behavioral problems and weaker attachments.

Nevertheless, all those children who had spent their early years in institutions were more attention-seeking from adults and showed difficulties in their social relationships, particularly with their peers.

Children who had experienced institutional care showed a higher prevalence of attachment disorders compared to the adopted children. They displayed more indiscriminate friendliness and a lack of selectivity in their social relationships.

Age 8

The institutional children continued to display more problems in their peer relationships and exhibited less empathy and social understanding compared to the adopted children.

By eight years of age, those who were adopted had formed secure attachments, and the children restored to their birth families had insecure attachments.

Age 16

Some of these children, as well as their parents and care workers, were interviewed again at 16 years of age. They were compared with a new control group, as the original control children no longer matched the children in the adopted and restored groups.

Hodges and Tizard found that the adopted children still had good attachments, which compared favorably with the control children.

Fewer restored children were reported as having good attachments, but the children who had been brought up in institutional care had experienced the most instability and showed some difficulties in their later attachments.

The negative effects of early institutional care persisted into adolescence. The ex-institutional group reported more problems in their relationships with peers and romantic partners, had lower self-esteem, and experienced more emotional difficulties compared to the adopted group.

Conclusion

This evidence shows that Bowlby was correct to emphasize the importance of the early years.

However, as Bowlby predicted, the effects of delay in the formation of attachments do not necessarily persist into adulthood and lead to affectionless psychopathy.

Indeed, loving relationships and high-quality care are necessary to reverse privation effects.

When tested later on, it was found that the adopted children had closer attachments than those returning to biological parents. This is not as surprising as it first appears since the first group was simply returning to the same bad situation they had been removed from earlier in life. The adopted children were in families that really wanted children and were prepared to care for them.

Weaknesses

Social desirability

Hodges and Tizard used interviews and questionnaires, which can produce answers that are affected by social desirability – the wish to appear in a good light.

The responses of those interviewed may have been inaccurate, and this would affect the results.

Extraneous Variables

Institutionalized children don’t just suffer emotional privation but also poor physical care, such as a bad diet and lack of stimulation. As a result, it isn’t easy to separate the effects of privation (lack of attachment) and from poor physical care.

It is possible that the children chosen for adoption were the more attractive and socially able children. The children’s temperaments could be a confounding variable in this study. So, we cannot infer the cause and effect of early privation on subsequent social development.

It could be that families experiencing more difficulties were more likely to drop out and withdraw, and this may also apply to the comparison group, because the families who agreed to take part may have been those with fairly good relationships with their 16-year-olds. Thus, the research results may be biased due to the sample.

Attrition

Longitudinal studies are very time-consuming and expensive, and they suffer from attrition, which is the loss of participants between each data collection (8 & 16 years). The adolescents may not want to participate any more or may have moved and been untraceable.

For example, out of the original 65 families, only 51 remained at age 8, and when the child reached age 16, only 42 families remained.

Implications

The study was very useful in highlighting the problems experienced by ex-institutional children. The results could be applied to how children in care should be looked after. For example, the importance of an attachment figure would appear to be crucial for social development.

If children are cared for by huge numbers of temporary carers, this is likely to have a detrimental effect on their long-term development.

The study also suggests that adoption is highly successful and this again could have useful implications for those who are involved in making decisions about children in care.