Theme 5 The Wild and Isolated Children and Critical Age For Learning Language

Vicerrectorado de Docencia
Unidad de Apoyo a la Formación Académica
Psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics

Theme n.° 5
The wild and isolated children and the critical age for learning languages
Index Page
5. The wild and isolated children and the issue of critical age
for learning languages 3
5.1. Victor: the wild boy of Aveyron 5
5.2. Genie: raised in isolation 7
5.3. Isabelle: confinement with a mute mother 10
5.4. Chelsea: began to learn the language at age 32 11
5.5. Helen Keller: the renowned deaf and blind girl 11
5.6. Oxana and Edik: raised by dogs 12
5.7. A critical age for first-language learning. 14
Complementary Resources 17
References 18
Self-evaluation 19
Theme n.° 5 The wild and isolated children and the critical age for learning languages ué es el2
arte?
5. The wild and isolated children and the issue of critical age for learning
languages.
Many people have been interested in discovering if language is just a
case of humans running, swimming feeling well, and so on. At the same time, if
it is possible to produce a language without any kind of experience or contact
with somebody else; especially with children if they are able to produce a
language on their own. Even though, the age when children begin to produce
speech.
A couple of centuries ago, There as a report of a number of reported
cases of children who were sharing their lives with wild or feral animals: wolves,
dogs, pigs, sheep, and others, and in some cases, they lived on their own in
isolation without any contact with people. (A fascinating collection of such cases
is described in Malson’s 1972 book Wolf Children). Actually, they are known as
wild or feral children. There are two girls from India who were raised by wolves
(Singh and Zingg, 1942), and another case in Ukrania, children who lived with
dogs. All of these cases attract the interest in this section. So, these reports
might provide insight into certain Psycholinguistic questions.
In brief, these are the cases that students are going to study about, and
be ready to analyse each case in terms of language development. The training
and skills obtained to produce speech.
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➢ Victor, a 12-year-old boy, was captured in January 1800, near the Woods
of Saint-Sernin Aveyron district of France.
➢ Genie was 13 years old and was discovered in the early 1970s, in Los
Angeles California.
➢ Isabelle, confined to a mute mother; started gaining language at the age
of six and a half, after freed from her mother.
➢ Chelsea learned a language at the age of 32. She was mistaken for
being deaf at birth. She started hearing the language with hearing aids.
She didn´t have any training in language,
➢ Helen Keller, the renowned deaf and blind girl, became deaf and blind at
the age of 19 due to illness. She was exposed to the learning language
before her illness.
➢ Oxana was discovered in 1991, living in a kennel and raised by dogs, her
parents abandoned her at the age of three, due to their addiction to
alcohol. Given shelter by a dog family for the next 5 years, she behaved
like a dog when she was discovered.
➢ Edik a four-year-old child was discovered in 1999 by some social
workers in a small town in Ukraine. He lived with dogs since he was two
years old, belonging to an alcoholic mother.
arte?
Figure 1
Wild and isolated children and the issue of critical age for learning languages.
Note. A brief explanation of wild and isolated children and the critical age for
learning a language.
Source: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/10/31/chelsea-manning-
memoir
5.1. Victor: the Aveyron wild boy
Victor was a boy of about 12 years old, who was captured by hunters in
the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in the Aveyron district of France. He
was (For detailed accounts of Victor see Lane, 1976, and Shattuck, 1981.), he
was wearing almost nothing just a ragged shirt, and he made no sounds other
than throaty noises very similar to animals. He seemed to have survived on his
own for years in the wild environment.
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After his rescue, the boy was assigned to a creative and expert educator,
Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard. He set up a very serious and intensive program to
help Victor produce speech sounds as well as language training. His program
was fixed by using special strategies that included a variety of games and
activities that Itard designed to socialize Victor and make him aware of the
world around him.
Itard made Victor repeat some words and speech, and it became
disappointing and frustrating because Victor tried to associate the sounds, he
was taught with the sounds he used to produce while he was in the wild
environment. Eventually, Victor came to be able to distinguish speech sounds
from other sounds, and even able to differentiate the sounds of normal speech
from the poorly pronounced speech sounds made by the deaf children in the
institute for the deaf where he now resided.
In spite of Victor´s speech being moderate, he was able to understand
and produce some commands only, However, Itard did not stop his program of
training Victor, and changed his goal, trying to teach him reading and writing
instead. At this time, Itard was fully motivated because Victor made progress in
reading and writing skills.
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Figure 2
Wild Child of Aveyron.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CkH_pcbQ1M
5.2. Genie: raised in isolation
Genie was born in 1957 and was discovered at the age of thirteen in Los
Angeles area of California. She was locked in a small room in her house by her
father since she was twenty months old. During the day, she did not have any
clothes to wear except for a harness that held her to an infant’s toilet seat. At
night, she had a sleeping bag to sleep in and was put into a cage, she was fed
but never spoken to.
Genie, a victim of severe abuse was a feral child, neglect, and social
isolation. Her circumstances were seriously registered in the annals of
linguistics and abnormal child Psychology. This case was well documented by
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researchers called Genie (Curtiss et al., 1974; Fromkin et al., 1974; Curtiss,
1977, 1981; Rymer, 1993).
In spite of her abandonment, she was mistreated and abused, what is
more, she had no contact with people and no food to eat.
Figure 3
The story of Genie Wiley.
Note. A case study little Genie
Source: https://www.slideshare.net/HannahYang22/a-case-study-little-genie
Her father beat her frequently with a wooden stick abrup rudely, so her
mother could not tolerate it more and suddenly escaped, taking the child with
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her. It was in this way that the case was discovered by the authorities. As for
the father, he committed suicide on the day he was to be put on trial for
mistreating the child.
After a couple of weeks of freedom, she was included in a language
program, she displayed some ability to understand and even imitate some
individual words, such as ‘mother’, ‘red’, and ‘bunny’. However, except for such
words, she could not manage the grammatical structure and word order.
(Fromkin et al., 1974, p. 87). Frequently, she answered by using gestures and
intonation of words.
After a couple of months of care and training, there was a change in her
appearance Genie changed considerably, she grew, gained weight and
strength, and her original speech production had been limited to a few
utterances such as ‘No-more’ and ‘Stoppit’, by the end of a few months she had
acquired the words for hundreds of objects.
Finally, after some years of exposure to language learning, she made
little progress. Her language ability, both in terms of understanding and
production, remained well below normal and her speech continued to be
ungrammatical. But she was conducted to a retarded adult’s home where she
now lives (Rymer, 1993).
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5.3. Isabelle: confinement with a mute mother
This is the case of Isabelle, a child who lived in a confinement with a
mute mother, Mason (1942), because of her confinement she did not begin to
learn the language until she gained her freedom at the age of six and a half.
Isabelle´s mother had had a brain injury at the age of 2, and as a result,
never developed speech. According to Mason, ‘She was totally uneducated,
due to the fact that she could neither talk, read, or write, but communicated with
her family by means of sign language rudely.
Both, Isabelle and her mother had been put under custody in a room,
behind designed shades. The mother finally escaped, taking Isabelle, and it was
then that Isabelle’s case was brought to the attention of the authorities. This
situation helped Isabelle have the opportunity to be admitted to the Children’s
Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, in November of 1938. Mason was the assistant
director of the Speech Clinic of the hospital and she undertook the task of trying
to help Isabelle.
Isabelle’s made progress at vocalization. The child’s first spoken sounds
were approximations of ‘ball’ and ‘car’ in response to being shown a ball and a
toy car and being prompted by Mason through gestures to try and say the
words.
Later on, after three months of treatment in the hospital, Isabelle was
Theme n.° 5 The wild and isolated children and the critical age for learning languages ué es10
el
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producing sentences, utterances, and commands, definitely she was able to
produce speech. She also developed listening attentively while a story is read to
her. Even she retold the story in her own limited vocabulary.
9.4. Chelsea: began to learn the language at age 32
This is another case of wild and isolated children to analyse. A girl aged
thirty-two years old. Her name is Chelsea misdiagnosed as retarded, not deaf.
She began to learn the language at the age of 32 years old. She lived in a rural
area in Northern California and did not have any access to language training or
instruction. At that age, she was tested to see if her hearing system was perfect.
Fortunately, she was not deaf totally, but partially hearing-impaired. Hearing
aids were fitted to correct for the impairment and with them, she was able to
hear speech relatively normally.
Chelsea has developed an extensive vocabulary and poor word order.
She also developed rapidly in vocabulary and the use of language in a wide
range of speech acts such as complaints, requests, and greetings. She was
unable to form grammatically correct utterances and remain on topic.
9.5. Helen Keller: the renowned deaf and blind girl
Helen Keller was born normal, but when she was 19 years old became
deaf and blind due to illness. Unlike the other children, she had already
experienced some degree of language learning with a limited level of
comprehension and production. At the age of seven years old, she got the
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extent of her language exposure. Anne Sullivan Macy came to teach her
language. Macy, herself partly blind and only 21 years old, was engaged by
Keller’s parents on the recommendation of Alexander Graham Bell.
Sullivan Macy’s efforts to teach Helen language through the sense of
touch were successful, she learned communication techniques in
teaching blind–deaf persons.) Thus, Helen learned the language through touch
and later even learned to speak. Even though Helen was unable to hear and
receive any auditory feedback of her own speech, she nevertheless was able to
produce speech even though she could not receive any auditory feedback, at
the end, Keller succeeded in language learning.
5.6. Oxana and Edik: raised by dogs
In 1991 Oxana was found living in a kennel in the back garden of the
family home in a town in Ukraine. She needed shelter so she just crawled into a
dog house, and for the next five years, a dog helped her survive, undoubtedly,
by providing her with food and warmth.
She was born in 1983, and her medical history reported her to be a
healthy child. However, her parents were alcoholics, and one day Oxana at the
age of three years old was simply left outside. She made her life exactly like a
dog, she mostly barked but hardly spoke some words, and nobody could
understand what she said. Then, Oxana went to a home for the mentally ill.
Where she received some language training and her speech was improved, she
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was able to talk in simple sentences. Unfortunately, Oxana’s development
seems to come to a limit and progresses no further.
Nowadays, Oxana can express herself, and many of her behavior
problems have been solved out. It does not mean that she will be able to form
solid relationships and feel part of a human community; her doctors said that it
is difficult for a 'normal' society to rehabilitate adequately. She still has a
mentality of a 6-year-old.
Figure 4
The story of Oxana raised by dogs.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqfl8A2fiaM
Edik
In 1999 in a small town in Ukraine, social workers found 4-year-old Edik
in a deserted apartment. It turned out that his mother was an alcoholic, too,
el
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and though she stayed in the apartment from time to time, she hadn’t cared
for the boy since he was 2 years old. He had to turn to stray dogs for survival.
Two years after his discovery, Edik was living in a foster home. His
language skills and grammar improved, but slowly. At the age of 6, his speech
was like that of a 3-year-old. James Law, Professor of Language and
Communication Studies, at City University, London, studied Edik and remains
optimistic about his language progress; Edik’s social skills, however, are likely
to remain impaired, he says.
5.7. A critical age for first- language learning.
Is there a critical age for first-language learning?
According to Lenneberg's theory, the natural acquisition of a mother or a
second language occurs just for mere exposure during a critical period that
begins at the age of two years and ends in puberty. This usually happens with
normal children and obviously with permanent motivation and control of parents
or caregivers.
During the prior study cases, it is important to point out that age and
language exposure are mandatory to learn not only the mother language but the
second language as well, following language training and constant practice. In
the cases of Hellen and Isabelle, they began language training at the age of six
or seven. On the other hand, Victor and Genie who were almost twice as old as
el
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the other girls when were discovered, they did not learn as much language as
Helen and Isabelle did, nor did Chelsea. This is sustained in Lenneberg (1967).
Dana Smith in her article: At What Age Does Our Ability to Learn a New
Language Like a Native Speaker Disappear? Mentioned that to become
completely fluent, however, learning should start before the age of 10.
There are some beliefs that language-learning ability decreases at the
age of 18 due to the fact social changes, interference from one's primary
language, and continuing brain development. Remember that at this age (18)
most students typically graduate from high school and are ready to go to
university or work, in any case, they no longer have time to study their own
language worst a second one as they had the opportunity to do in school,
except in circumstances that are taking languages as a profesión.
Finally, this is not to say that we cannot learn a new language if we are
over 20. There are numerous cases that even they are better than kids, but it
depends on their own motivation, the ability to learn new vocabulary appears to
remain constant, but most of us will not be able to master the whole elements of
language. https://www.scientificamerican
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Figure 5
Is there actually an age barrier for learning languages?
Note. While age increases, the ability to grasp the workings of a second
language decreases.
Source: https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa16/2016/11/11/is-there-actually-an-age-
barrier-for-learning-languages/
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Complementary Resources
Lenneberg EH: Biological Foundations of Language. New York: Wiley; 1967. A
detailed publication, which is still cited constantly, in which Lenneberg developed the
critical period hypothesis referring to many of its aspects
• Video: From Barking to Speaking
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3NNkG0uI0
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References
Fromkin, V., Krashen, S., Curtiss, S., Rigler, D. and Rigler, M. (1974) The
development of language in Genie: A case of language beyond the
critical period. Brain and Language, 1, 87–107.
Lane, H. (1976) The Wild Boy of Aveyron. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Malson, L. (1972) Wolf Children and the Problem of Human Nature – With the
Complete Text of the Wild Boy of Aveyron. New York: Monthly Review.
Rymer, R. (1993) Genie: A Scientific Tragedy. New York: Harper Collins.
Singh, J. A. L. and Zingg, R. M. (1942) Wolf Children and Feral Man. New York:
Harper.
Steinberg, D. & Sciarini N. (2006) An Introduction to Psycholinguistics. London:
Longman.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/at-what-age-does-our-ability-to-learn-
a-new-language-like-a-native-speaker-
disappear/#:~:text=To%20become%20completely%20fluent%2C%20however,l
anguage%20and%20continuing%20brain%20development.
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Vicerrectorado de Docencia

Unidad de Apoyo a la Formación Académica

Psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics

for learning languages 3

5.1. Victor: the wild boy of Aveyron 5

5.2. Genie: raised in isolation 7

5.3. Isabelle: confinement with a mute mother 10

5.4. Chelsea: began to learn the language at age 32 11

5.5. Helen Keller: the renowned deaf and blind girl 11

5.6. Oxana and Edik: raised by dogs 12

5.7. A critical age for first-language learning. 14

Many people have been interested in discovering if language is just a

it is possible to produce a language without any kind of experience or contact

A couple of centuries ago, There as a report of a number of reported

might provide insight into certain Psycholinguistic questions.

be ready to analyse each case in terms of language development. The training

and skills obtained to produce speech.

of Saint-Sernin Aveyron district of France.

➢ Isabelle, confined to a mute mother; started gaining language at the age

of six and a half, after freed from her mother.

She didn´t have any training in language,

before her illness.

parents abandoned her at the age of three, due to their addiction to

like a dog when she was discovered.

➢ Edik a four-year-old child was discovered in 1999 by some social

years old, belonging to an alcoholic mother.

5.1. Victor: the Aveyron wild boy

own for years in the wild environment.

Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard. He set up a very serious and intensive program to

world around him.

disappointing and frustrating because Victor tried to associate the sounds, he

environment. Eventually, Victor came to be able to distinguish speech sounds

institute for the deaf where he now resided.

In spite of Victor´s speech being moderate, he was able to understand

reading and writing skills.

Wild Child of Aveyron.

5.2. Genie: raised in isolation

but never spoken to.

isolation. Her circumstances were seriously registered in the annals of

1977, 1981; Rymer, 1993).

In spite of her abandonment, she was mistreated and abused, what is

more, she had no contact with people and no food to eat.

The story of Genie Wiley.

Note. A case study little Genie

mistreating the child.

After a couple of weeks of freedom, she was included in a language

appearance Genie changed considerably, she grew, gained weight and

acquired the words for hundreds of objects.

Finally, after some years of exposure to language learning, she made

little progress. Her language ability, both in terms of understanding and

production, remained well below normal and her speech continued to be

now lives (Rymer, 1993).

5.3. Isabelle: confinement with a mute mother

This is the case of Isabelle, a child who lived in a confinement with a

never developed speech. According to Mason, ‘She was totally uneducated,

her family by means of sign language rudely.

situation helped Isabelle have the opportunity to be admitted to the Children’s

Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, in November of 1938. Mason was the assistant

Isabelle’s made progress at vocalization. The child’s first spoken sounds

producing sentences, utterances, and commands, definitely she was able to

9.4. Chelsea: began to learn the language at age 32

hear speech relatively normally.

Chelsea has developed an extensive vocabulary and poor word order.