Cognitive and emotional development in family-reared and institutionalized children

Abstract

In this study the intellectual and personality development of children who have had minimal environmental stimuli and no parental rearing in the early years of their life and -who are between 7-10 years of age have been investigated by making use of Koppitz' Human Figure Drawing test. With the children who have been accepted to institutions by the time they were two years of age, the facts of having maternal deprivation as well as insufficient environmental stimuli have been taken into the consideration. The control group was divided into two subgroups within itself; the first one being low SES family-reared children and the second high SES family-reared children. In this study 70 institutionalized, 80 low SES and 80 high SES family - reared children were tested. The results have shown that while the intellectual development of the institutionalized group is slower than the other groups of children, the low SES group is slower in intellectual development compaied to the high SES group. The institutionalized group also showed more emotional disturbance compared to the other two groups. Finally the results of this study enable us to make use of these data in the standardization of the Human Figure Drawing test as well as drawing our attention to negative influences of living in an institutionalized setting, and thus suggesting that certain precautions be taken.