Why is socialization important?

How did Oxana’s socialization contribute to her personality and behavior?

Which theory of development—Cooley’s, Mead’s, Freud’s, or Erikson’s

How would this theory describe her upbringing and behavior?

Oxana Malaya Case Study

Oxana

Malaya

Oxana Malaya was abandoned by her parents, in a small village in the Ukraine at the age of three and forced to live on the streets alone. At the time her parents where abusive and alcoholic. Oxana found refuge in a hovel that kept dogs.

Once she realised that no one was missing her, Oxana decided to stay with the dogs where it was warm and there was food.

After 5 years of living with the pack of dogs, Oxana was found running around on all fours and barking like a dog.

Ethical Issues

There are always ethical issues concerning children that do not follow the typical human developmental path, especially for feral children and children with disabilities in general. First of all, as I mentioned just before, from the conducted cognitive tests, at the age of 22 years old, Oxana had the mental age of a five or six year old. This would have most likely proven to be an enormous struggle for Oxana, being an outcast and socially segregated by others of her age. Oxana made good progress further down the track, it would not have been till around the age of 27 that she had developed the basic human skills to an accepted yet not 100% normal level.Oxana lived with the pack of dogs between the ages of 3-8.

This meant that she missed out on the development of most of the preoperational and some of the concrete operational stage of development. The preoperational stage involves learning to understand languages and how to express words. This is called Symbolic Thinking. One of the most important symbolic thought processes is language development.

A child has to understand that letters symbolize sounds, that words symbolize things or actions, and that sentences symbolize idea units. Oxana was living with the dogs during the preoperational stage and she learnt to bark to get what she wanted.

Because Oxana wasn’t rescued until she was 8, the whole preoperational stage of development was missed and was not taught the basic human skills. Significant delay in human development when she first re-entered society. In order to get a clearer sense of Oxana’s intellectual capacities Dr Lyn Fry asked her to draw a picture of her home with herself in it. Dr Fry also brought some standard cognitive tests to assess Oxana’s verbal and non-verbal skills. Cognitive tests also show that 22-year-old Oxana has the mental age of a five or six-year-old. Psychologists believed she'd never be able to catch up. Oxana has made good progress learning to talk which is unusual in cases of feral children. Linda Blair, a Psychologist, gave an explanation stating “Oxana had to have heard language on a regular basis. It may not have been directed to her, but she had to have been exposed to it and also to have seen humans talking to each other”.

In Conclusion, Oxana Malaya is a good example of a case where a Feral child saw some success that allowed her to integrate into society in a regular fashion. She did see massive progress when compared to many other feral children.

However, like many other feral child and neglected child cases, it will be a struggle to have to deal with their past when confronting big events throughout their lifetime.