Case Studies: Isolated and Feral Children
Victor (1797)
found at age 13; had apparently been living in the woods was neither deaf nor mute; exhibited characteristics common to
wild children (e.g. insensitivity to temperature, different eating
habits)
after 9 months: could spell words (by matching the written form to the object
cried, showed sense of justice, empathy, gestural communication
after 5 years: could finally apply names of things to larger semantic groups (book)
could write some words, learned adj. and verbs.
details of vocab size unknown
Isabelle (early 1900s)
found at 6.5; imprisoned w/ deaf-mute mother by maternal grandfather
cared for, but no language model
no spontaneous imitation of speech
after 1 month: single words
after 2 months: short sentences, read printed words
after 1 year: could write, count, listen to and paraphrase stories
after 1.5 years: 1500-2000 words. complex sentence structure
Genie: a modern-day isolated child
Genie (1970)
found at age 13; insensitive to temperature and touch; silent; but social (good eye contact); mouthed words silently;
after 8 months: ~200 words showed utterances corresponding to 2-wd. stage
after 1 year: spontaneous production of 3-word utterances, often these followed the component 2-wd. utterances.
Preposed negative
after 2 years: -ing morpheme; still mostly content words; no function morphemes (pronouns, affixes, articles, occasional plural marker, occasional "the";
after 3 years: past tense markers
Left hemisphere atrophy? tests indicated right hemisphere dominance for language.
Most sentences were 5-7 morphemes long.
Had some ability for longer expressions:
At school teacher give block.
Father hurt Genie cry long time ago.
Mama not have baby grow up.
Mama say not lift my leg in dentist chair.
Mr. W. say put face in big swimming pool.
Note ability to express thoughts from pre-linguistic years.