Early institutional or orphanage rearing, typically characterized by profound psychosocial deprivation, has been associated with adjustment difficulties that may persist long after adoption (for a review, see Gunnar
2001). In particular, post-institutionalized (PI) youth, especially those having experienced longer durations of adverse care, are more likely to show deficits in social cognition (e.g., Theory of Mind, Colvert et al.
2008b; Tarullo et al.
2007; emotion processing, Parker and Nelson
2005; Wismer Fries and Pollak
2004). These difficulties in recognizing and understanding others’ thoughts and feelings are likely to hinder PI youths’ ability to navigate social interactions with peers, which become increasingly complex in adolescence (Steinberg and Morris
2001). As such, PI youth may become targets of peers’ rebuffs and abuse, common sequelae of social cognitive deficits in normative samples (e.g., Kaukiainen et al.
2002). Indeed, early institutional deprivation has been linked to elevated social problems in broad-based functional assessments (Groze and Ileana
1996; Gunnar et al.
2007; Hawk and McCall
2011), and several studies have described lower peer acceptance and difficulties forming and maintaining intimate friendships years after adoption (e.g., Hodges and Tizard
1989; Tizard and Hodges
1978). …
