Wild Children

BY: Gabriela Quizanga

Wild children

Are you familiar with these terms?

Innateness Hypothesis

Critical Period Hypothesis

Legends: evil kings and

emperors Herodotus: Egyptian king

Psamtik I, VII BC (2 infants to a shepherd)

Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II: attempt to reconstruct the language of Adam and Eve

King James IV of Scotland (Hebrew?)

Akbar the Great, the Mogul emperor of India, XVI. (no input: no speech)

What language will children develop if they had never been

exposed to speech?

1800, Aveyron district of France 11-12 years old Sicard, director of the Institute for Deaf-Mutes in Paris, got custody Strong similarities between the wild

child and deaf children > however, no progress – unteachable

Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard, programme for social and language development sharpen boy’s perceptual abilities

(match colours and shapes) learned to associate words to objects,

could read and write to a significant extent

mute until his death in 1828

Victor: the wild boy of Aveyron

1970s, USA 13 ½ years old – locked in small room

by her father for 12 years (fed, but never spoken to; beaten for producing sounds)

had acquired language to a low level prior to confinement

cognitive abilities: little more than those of a 2-year-old

in few months acquired words for hundreds of objects

developed well socially simple and ungrammatical speech

(better understanding) not able to acquire normal level of

language

Genie: raised in solitary confinement

1942, USA 6 ½ years of age, locked in

a room Children’s Hospital in

Columbus, Ohio Mason, Assistant Director of

the Speech Clinic in less than 3 months –

producing sentence utterances

after 20 months – from her first spoken word to full length sentences

Isabelle: confinement with a mute mother

blind and deaf at the age of 19

months after 7 years, Anne Sullivan Macy

taught language through the sense of touch (recommended by Alexander Graham Bell)

graduated from Harvard University with honours and became acclaimed lecturer and writer in the service of handicapped people

Wrote an autobiography: The Story of My Life

Helen: the famous deaf and blind girl

1991, Ukraine Lived in a kennel with dogs for 5

years Alcoholic parents letf her outside

when 3 years old Learned to barked to communicate Now, she lives in a home for

mentally ill. She is 22 years old and can talk in

simple sentences. She prefers to live with dogs.

Oxana: raised by dogs

What is Critical Period Hypothesis?

Lenneberg (1967) offers the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) embodying two ideas: • the biological basis responsible

for language development can establish the critical period for the language acquisition, between the age of 18 months and early puberty;

• during the critical period the child’s presence in the linguistically supportive environment is necessary as it leads into the successful language development

The first to introduce the Critical Period

Hypothesis were Wilder Penfield and co-author Lamar Roberts in their book Speech and Brain Mechanisms in 1959.

Penfield and Roberts main study was the neuroscience of language, concluding that language was dominant in the left hemisphere of the brain.

They added to these results that children up to the age of nine can learn multiple languages.

They stated that young children who are exposed to different languages find it easier to switch between languages, and without having to translate from their native tongue.

Wilder Penfield & co-author Lamar Roberts

In 1967, Eric Lenneberg further studied the Critical Period Hypothesis in his book, Biological Foundations of Language.

He supported Penfield and Roberts belief of children having a certain amount of time to acquire language and after this time the acquistion of the first language will be nearly impossible.

Lenneberg also approved the position that the reason for this critical period is due to neurological developments.

He presented that until the age of 13, language is present in both hemispheres of the brain.

After this age the functions of the hemispheres become more clear-cut and language is most dominant in the left hemisphere. Therefore language acquisition is more difficult to acquire after this split.

Eric Lenneberg

Three major factors influence language acquisition: (1) the age at which the beginning of non-exposure

to language occurred; (2) the duration of non-exposure to language; (3) the extent of any physical, psychological and

social trauma prior to being discovered and taught language.

Important: critical age for first-language learning lies somewhere under Victor and Genie’s ages of 12 and 13 years, but above Isabelle and Helen’s ages of 6 and 7 years

A critical age for first-language acquisition?

Is language instinctive? Can children produce

it on their own? Why is there a critical period? What is the precise period? What is the precise effect on language

learning if a child doesn’t receive input in time?

Are all aspects of language equally affected? How is it possible to test these effects?

Discussion

Regardless of how complex the linguistic domains of

language can be, the individual experiencing language before the biological maturation may become the skilled user of language.

Lenneberg's hypothesis is not proven, but it is strongly supported.

The discussed cases highlight an idea that language learning process after the critical period may end up in a very limited language usage.

Hence, critical period may exit just for the particular areas of language as showed in the case of Genie (acquisition of vocabulary).

Conclusions