Feral Children

A feral child is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age. These children have little to no experience of human care, social behavior, and human language. The impaired ability to learn formal language after being in isolation for so many years is often attributed to critical periods of learning. A critical period is a phase during the early ages of life where it is crucial for the development for a particular skill. It may be extremely difficult or even impossible to develop certain functions later in life.

The first article is the story of Genie Wiley. Her story came to light on November 4, 1970 in Los Angeles, California. Officials in the Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia took custody of the thirteen year old girl. She was kept in such isolation by her parents that she never even learned to talk. Genie still wore diapers and was uttering infantile noises when a social worker discovered the case. Authorities were hoping that Genie may still have a normal learning capacity.

For thirteen years, Genie lived in a dark, locked room. She was most often strapped to her potty chair. Her father, Clark, ordered his son John and his wife Irene never to talk to her. She lived in almost total isolation.

The National Institute of Mental Health provided funding for scientific research on Genie's case. She was taken to UCLA. Her rehabilitation team also included graduate student Susan Curtiss and psychologist James Kent. Her silence and inability to use language made it difficult to assess her mental abilities, but on tests she scored at about the level of a one year old. Despite scoring so low, Genie quickly began adding new words to her vocabulary. She started by learning single words and eventually began putting two words together much like the way young children do. Curtiss began to feel that Genie would be fully capable of acquiring language.

She soon began to make rapid progression in specific areas, quickly learning how to use the...