Brian Wagner

The Development of Language in Genie: A Case of Language Acquisition

Beyond the "Critical Period

Genie was a special case in regards to human development. Never before had a person been subjected to such experiential, audible, and vocal stimuli. Genie had suffered serious neglect, even when it came to such basic human necessities as a bathroom and food. She was either strapped into a child's chair, or she was stuck in a crib. She was kept in the house at all hours of the day and had rare human contact. She was either fed by her mother or berated by her father and older brother. She had almost no acoustic stimuli and was brutally punished by her father if she made any noise. Genie was born with a congenital dislocation of her hips, this called for the use of a special splint to keep her legs in abduction. Her father had blamed her supposed retardation on said splint. From information available for researchers there was no records of her having any form of retardation at birth.

As it comes to the development of Genie's language, it is apparent that she had no language. Due to her father's strict enforcement of her not making any sounds, she was for all intents and purposes mute. Dr. James Kent reported that at her discovery she made no sounds except for a throaty whimper, and at some points imitated certain words from sentences back to doctors. She was able to nonverbally explain her needs. When very angry she would scratch at her own face and void urine. Early in the investigation Genie was able to respond to verbal cues and could imitate single words. It was established that she had some form of language competence. Her challenge would be growing that language competence and then attempting to grasp the functions of speech.

As she was taught and observed, Genie certainly was eager to learn and willing to cooperate. Genie could understand singular words, but except for such words she had no understanding of grammatical structure and function. Susan Curtis was the most heavily involved in the testing of Genie's language as well as her development. Through the use of these tests Genie's vocabulary and skill improved. Words of 2 and 3 syllables became a new tool for her, as well she could produce any English sound. She was able to produce three and four word sentences, and later was able to produce negative sentences. Her progress very much paralleled early language development in children. Her linguistic competence was on par with a two to two and a half year old child. As she made incredible progress, she did hit a wall.
At a certain point her linguistic skills stopped growing, and it was apparent that due to her cognitive development being so impaired she could not get any better. This became the beginning of the end for Genie, as she her shortcomings in the research started to yield a definitive fact that if someone is as impaired as she is for so long and misses that critical time for learning, they cannot be brought up to normal standards. A time moved on Genie's mom became her legal guardian and filed a law suit against her researchers. She has fallen out of the public eye after being cut off from hospital and UCLA.

Her case is certainly a wild one and the suffering of this child cannot go unheard of. Abuse of this caliber is something of an abnormality in this day of age where the protection of children is so apparent in our societal standards. To see how she has been abused is not only disgusting, bit a call for the head of any people who treat another human being with such immense disrespect and cruelty. Her case is incredibly unique, as there have been feral children before, but none have ever been like her in the respect of her cognitive and linguistic development. She was the perfect person to test the critical age hypothesis on, and yielded incredible results. The only problem is it is certainly not ethical to ever repeat such kinds of experiments as the suffering the specimen would endure is beyond comprehension. Her story is one of great intrigue and awful sadness, hopefully it won't go completely lost to time.

Summary Peer Review

Answer the questions below about each of your group members' papers. Also, use the "comment" function in Word to give them direct feedback on their papers. When you are finished, send your responses to your group members via email - do your best to give them feedback!

1. Where is the overall 1-2 sentence summary/overview of the entire text (underline or highlight it)? Is there a clear summary statement? If not, how could it be improved?

2. Is the summary clear? Do you feel like you understand the main ideas of the whole article? Give suggestions about where the author could explain ideas more clearly or add important details to help you understand better.

3. Is the summary objective? Does it accurately and in an unbiased way describe the points of the article? If there are sections that seem too biased, tell the author about them.

4. Does the author reflect on the text and engage with it? Is their engagement a substantial interaction with the ideas with the text? How could their reflection be improved?

5. "Have you thought of..." Give the author some "have you thought of" suggestions for additions, revisions, or improvements.

6. Look at the overall organization and structure of the essay. Are there sections or paragraphs that could be moved? Does the author include clear connections and transitions between points? Where could the organization/coherence be improved?

7. Look at the paragraph structure within the essay. Do each of the paragraphs have a clear topic/theme/idea? Do each of the sentences within the paragraph clearly relate to that topic? Are the sentences within each paragraph clearly connected to each other? Where could the coherence within and among paragraphs be improved?

8. Are there any grammatical, mechanical, or vocabulary errors that the author could address throughout the paper?

9. What is the number 1 suggestion you would give to improve the paper?