The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design

Author:Urie Bronfenbrenner
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2009-09-06T18:13:00+00:00

These results from an English study parallel those found by Goldfarb forty years earlier in the United States. Tizard and Hodges go beyond Goldfarb, however, in relating shifts in child behavior over time to both group and individual differences in the environments in which the children had been living. Thus the highest mean IQ (115) was obtained by previously institutionalized children who had been adopted before the age of four, compared with a mean of 103 for children restored to the natural families at the same age. "This adopted group also had a reading age ten months in advance of that of the restored children" (p. 112). By contrast, institutionalized youngsters adopted or restored after the age of four and a half scored consistently lower in IQ (means of 101 and 93, respectively). Moreover, differences in intellectual performance as well as in social behavior varied directly with the strength of the emotional tie with the child reported by the mother or housemother. The strongest bonds were described by adoptive mothers and those who had raised their own children from birth, the weakest by housemothers in institutions and biological mothers whose children had been restored to them after having been institutionalized. Finally, important from a developmental perspective were significant associations between attachment to the mother, cognitive measures, and "relative lack of behavioral problems" (p. 112). These relations obtained within as well as across social class groups.

On the basis of their findings, Tizard and Hodges conclude that "the subsequent development of the early institutionalized child depends very much on the environment to which he is moved." With respect to aftereffects of institutionalization, the authors take a more qualified stance: "these findings appear to suggest that up to six years after leaving the institution, some children still showed the effects of early institutional rearing" (p. 113). It is important to recognize that the institutions in question are the same ones described earlier by Tizard and Rees (1974) as having "a good staffchild ratio, together with a generous provision of toys, books, and outings ... in the absence of any close and/or continuous relationship with a mother substitute" (p.-97)

In my view the most recent findings of the Tizard group suggest that the absence or disruption of such a relationship is not without some negative developmental consequences. The association the investigators found between indexes of attachment and developmental gains, as well as their finding of developmental disruption among children restored to mothers who had not developed strong attachment toward them, constitutes additional evidence in support of hypotheses I derived earlier. These were based on other research emphasizing the importance of maintaining the continuity of the dyad between the young child and his primary caretaker, and the critical impact of ecological transitions in early childhood (hypotheses 6, 7, and 16 through 18).

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