The Case of Genie
Genie was discovered when she was 13 years old. She had been kept in a small room and not spoken to since she was an infant. She could not stand erect and could not speak, she could only whimper. Naturally she attracted the attention of many psychologists and linguists who were keen to study her. She was given the Vineland Social Maturity Scale and the Preschool Attainment Record, on which she scored as low as a normal one year old. Her linguistic abilities were very poor: she could only understand her own name and the word ‘sorry’. She was unsocialised, she did not know how to chew, salivated constantly and was not toilet trained.
During the first seven months, Genie learned to walk with jerky motion and became toilet trained. However, when she was excited or agitated she urinated. She also masturbated excessively (Pines, 1997). Over time, Genie’s abilities on non-linguistic tasks improved considerably, reaching normal levels on some perceptual tasks. Her social skills were limited, however due to her poor language abilities, because of her poor intonation ‘only people who knew her well could understand much of what she was trying to say” (Curtiss, 1989).
For four years Genie resided with David and Marilyn Rigler (David Rigler was a researcher at the children’s hospital where she was first placed), where she seemed to settle in well and enjoy family life. She also seemed to form a good relationship with Susan Curtiss who conducted a seven year study on her language development.
The most well documented aspects of Genie’s development are her language abilities. According to nativist language theorists such as Lenneberg (1967), there is a critical period for language development:
‘the brain of a child before the age of two is not sufficiently mature for the acquisition of language, while after puberty, when the brain’s organization is complete, it has lost its flexibility and can no longer acquire a first language.’ (Lenneberg, 1967)
Genie did, however, manage to acquire some language abilities. At first she was only able to produce one-word utterances, which were usually nouns (Toddlers usually begin their language development in this way). Later, she produced two word strings spontaneously and was not merely copying what others had said. For example, she said “big teeth”, “little marble” and “two hand”. Soon after, she started to use some verbs, e.g., “want milk”, “Curtiss come”. Later she could string three words together.
While Genie’s language development seemed normal at first, she did not progress in the way that normal children do: she never asked questions, did not demonstrate any understanding of grammar and had no explosion in vocabulary.
The case of Genie is at odds, in some respects, with Lenneberg’s critical period hypothesis — she did develop some language ability. However, the fact that she did not develop normal language, with grammatical properties suggests that there is a critical period for at least some aspects of language development. However, there are difficulties in generalising from the case of Genie One difficulty is that her father claimed that she was “retarded”, if this was the case it may be the cause of her language deficiencies; nevertheless, her mother reports that she spoke words “right after she was locked up”.
cognitive tests appeared to show that that she was using her right hemisphere for both language and non-language functions. This suggests that the critical period allows language to develop in the left hemisphere.
Reversibility of Privation
The case of Genie suggests that some of the effects of privation are reversible. Genie was able to form attachments with her carers and developed some social skills, most of her social difficulties were due to her intonation, which made it difficult for people to understand her.
The negative cognitive effects of privation, however, showed little sign of reversal: Genie was able to develop some language, but this was limited and lacked grammatical structure.
The Czech Twins (Koluchova, 1972, 1991)
Soon after they were born JM and PM lost their mother and were looked after by a Czechoslovakian social agency for a year and then fostered by an aunt for six months.
When their father remarried they became part of the new family. However, they were locked in a cellar by their step mother and subjected to regular beatings for the next five and a half years.
They had no contact with the outside world until 1967 when they were discovered and removed from their parents. They had rickets, communicated mostly in gestures and had no spontaneous speech. Although their new environment was terrifying for them at first, they developed normally showing no signs of psychological abnormality when they were assessed at age 14. This recovery can be credited in part to the efforts of the two women that adopted them.
They formed good relationships with their adoptive mothers and siblings and both married and enjoyed stable relationships later in life. Their careers were also relatively successful, one of them became a computer technician and the other a technical training instructor.
Reversibility of Privation
The Czech twins demonstrate that the effects of early, severe privation are reversible; this challenges Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis. However, they had been raised in a normal home until they were eighteen months old (Koluchova, 1976), so they may have had opportunities to form attachments and this would make this a case of deprivation rather than privation. If they had formed an attachment to their mother and lost her, this may be less damaging than having never formed the attachment in the first place. Moreover, the boys were together when they were locked in the cellar and, therefore, may have formed attachments with each other.
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