Emotional deprivation in infants

Bakwin, Harry

doi:10.1016/s0022-3476(49)80071-0

Cited by 120 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Physical Growth: Children reared in globally deficient orphanages tend to be smaller in height, weight, and head and chest circumference (e.g., Bakwin, 1949;Fried & Mayer, 1948;Smyke, Koga, Johnson, Zeanah, & the BEIP Core Group, 2004;Spitz, 1945), and children recently adopted show the same growth retardation (Benoit, Joycelyn, Moddemann, & Embree, 1996;Johnson, 2000aJohnson, , 2000bJohnson, , 2001Johnson, Miller, & Iverson, 1992; Rutter, Kreppner, O'Connor, & the English Romanian Adoptions Study Team, 1998). Some investigators (Alpers, Johnson, Hostetter, Iverson, & Miller, 1997) have estimated on the basis of newly adopted orphanage children that physical growth falls behind by approximately 1 month for every 5 months children live in such orphanages.…”

Section: Developmental Delays In Resident Orphanage Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

I. Theoretical, Empirical, and Practical Rationale

2008

Monographs Society Res Child

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A fundamental quest of the developmental social and behavioral sciences is to specify the necessary and sufficient early experiences that lead to typical human development in childhood and adulthood. Because the opportunity to experimentally manipulate early human experiences is very limited, one approach is to observe the development and long-term outcomes of children who are tragically reared in atypically deficient early environments.Unfortunately, these studies usually are limited by a variety of confounds (J. McCall, 1999), among them sample selection, selective adoption, and the multifaceted nature of the early experience. For example, children reared in substandard orphanages (i.e., those in which some aspect of care is substantially inferior to that suggested by best practices) display developmental delays in most physical and behavioral domains, and such children who are later adopted into advantaged homes have higher frequencies of extreme behaviors and problems than nonorphanage children. But are these contemporary and long-term outcomes associated with the particular children who are sent to orphanages (e.g., unusual prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, adverse birth circumstances) rather than the orphanage experience per se? Which aspects (e.g., deficiencies in nutrition, medical care, toys, equipment, social-emotional neglect, lack of experience with relationships, abuse) of what is usually a globally deficient orphanage environment are associated with these delays and long-term problems?This monograph reports a study that comes closer to validating that one attribute of the orphanage environment, namely very limited caregiver-child social-emotional interactions and the lack of opportunity to develop caregiver-child relationships, can be responsible for contemporary delays in most major domains of development in institutionalized children.Specifically, in a quasi-experimental design, two social-emotional interventions were introduced in orphanages for children birth to 48 months in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, that otherwise had acceptable medical care, nutrition, sanitation, toys, equipment, and the absence of abuse but were primarily deficient in the children's social-emotional experience and opportunity for adult-child relationships. The results show substantial improvement in children's physical, mental, and social-emotional development; improvements for typical children and those with a variety of disabilities; and a dose-response effect for many developmental outcomes in which the more positive social-emotional experience given to children and the longer they spent in the interventions, the greater the developmental gains. These results substantiate the potential importance of early social-emotional experience and adult-child relationships for the contemporary development of young children in institutions.WITH COMMENTARY BY Susan C. Crockenberg., Michael Rutter Marian J. Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marinus H. van THEORETICAL RATIONALEMost developmental theories (e.g., psychoanalytic th...

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Section: Developmental Delays In Resident Orphanage Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

I. Theoretical, Empirical, and Practical Rationale

2008

Monographs Society Res Child

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“…There is evidence that separation can affect something as basic as physical growth and rate of development as found by Bakwin (2) and Fried and Mayer (8). A parental type of fondling and handling is even known to affect such factors in experimental laboratory animals as reported by Weininger ( 16).…”

Section: A Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

The Effects of Long-Term Hospitalization or Institutionalization upon the Language Development of Children

Haggerty

1959

The Journal of Genetic Psychology

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“…In the latter case, the failure to thrive is often called mirasmus or hospitalism (Bakwin, 1949). Maternal employment may relegate caregiving to a number of other people, or there may be outright desertion in which the mother indefinitely leaves the infant with others (Bullard et al, 1967;Shaheen et al, 1968).…”

Section: Environmental Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%