Study carried out by Jill Hodges and Barbara Tizard (1989)
John Bowlby (1909-1990) developed the theory of attachment. He believed that it was vital for an infant to develop a secure emotional bond with it’s primary carer (usually mother) in order to maintain healthy mental development. Bowlby observed infants who were separated from their primary carers and found that the effects of separation were visible when the infants were 5-6 months old. He found that the infants became anxious and distressed when separated from their attachment figures. Bowlby then referred to this process of separation as maternal deprivation. Deprivation is the loss of something that you previously had eg. emotional care from primary carer as a result of separation, divorce or death of carer. Deprivation differs from privation as privation means to never have had something in the first instance. Bowlby believed that if an infant failed to form emotional attachments with it’s primary carer in their first few months then this would negatively affect their behaviour development.
A study that challenged some of Bowlby’s findings was the study that was carried out by two psychologists, Jill Hodges and Barbara Tizard in 1989. Hodges and Tizard investigated the importance of attachments by observing children who had spent their first 2 years of life in institutions before being adopted into families or reunited with theire biological families. Their aim was to look at the effect institutions had on the children and how this affected their later development. They used a longitudinal approach whereby they studied the groups of children at regular intervals over a period of 16 years. The study focused on 31, 16 year old children who had all been in institutional care until they were at least 2 years of age. At around 2 years old most children had either been adopted or reunited with their biological parents. Hodges and Tizard also studied a comparison group of 31, 16 year old...