This thesis examined the development of adopted children to shed more light on the effects of deprivation on child development and the potential for catch-up and recovery after placement in the... Show moreThis thesis examined the development of adopted children to shed more light on the effects of deprivation on child development and the potential for catch-up and recovery after placement in the more advantageous environment of an adoptive family. In the first part of the thesis a meta-analysis is presented in which we compared adopted children’s attachment relationships with the normative attachment distribution of nonadopted children raised by their biological parents, and - as a comparison - we also compared the attachment distribution of foster children with the normative distribution. The second and third parts of the thesis focus on the development of former foster and post-institutionalized children, 11 to 16 months old at arrival, two and six months after their adoption from China. Several salient developmental domains were studied: attachment, cognitive and motor development, physical growth, stress regulation, and social-emotional behavior. Show less
