Researchers and social policy makers have long been interested in the
developmental impact of institutionalization. Are young children who
have experienced extreme deprivation in the first year or two of their
lives ever able to overcome such poor developmental beginnings? Children
in orphanages have been studied in many parts of the world (e.g., Iran,
Lebanon, United States, Greece, Romania, Russia, and Canada). The early
work on institutionalization demonstrated that deprivation resulted in developmental insult
but made no attempt to establish what it was about deprivation that
caused such deficits. Intellectual assessments were often used as
outcome measures and social emotional variables were used to explain
these outcomes.
