Carrie
Fitzpatrick
7/23/01
Book:
Curtiss, Susan. Genie: A
Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern Day Wild Child. New York: Academic
Press, 1977.
Overview: This text, written as the author’s graduate
thesis, discusses the case study of Genie, a child deprived and isolated from
almost all social interaction and language development until adolescence. The
case was referred to as “the forbidden experiment.” The book
synthesizes the linguistic research carried out through the author’s
experiences in studying and working with Genie, and attempts to answer several
questions: Is there a critical period for language acquisition? If so, what
kind of language development is possible beyond the critical period? What
happens to cerebral organization in general when one of the brain’s basic
functions fails to develop?
Part
I (Chapters 1-5)
This
section provides a case history and background information on Genie’s
personality and language behavior. Unlike most scientific writing, this
section reads like a narrative, providing relevant background information and
an account of the interaction between the author and Genie.
Background
Information
Genie
was born into a family where abuse was already common. Genie’s father
repeatedly threatened to kill his wife, beating her regularly over the years.
Despite the fact that her husband disliked kids, Genie’s mother gave birth
to four children, but only Genie and one older brother survived. The
father’s constant abuse made the entire family live in fear and isolation.
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Genie
was born a normal child. She was first taken to a pediatrician at the age of 3
months and her weight was 12 pounds, 2 1/4 ounces, and her height was 23
inches, normal for her age. She was taken back to the pediatrician regularly
for the first six months and appeared healthy. After her 6-month visitation,
Genie wasn’t brought back to the pediatrician until she was 11 months old.
At that visit, she weighed only 17 pounds and was below the 16th
percentile for her age and sex. Despite that, Genie was described as alert
with normal primary dentition for her age. At 14 months, she developed
pneumonia and was taken to see a different pediatrician. She was feverish,
listless and unresponsive. The physician stated that she showed signs of
possible retardation, but because of the fever, it was difficult to assess her
development. Genie’s father used this statement of “possible
retardation” as justification for the subsequent isolation and abuse Genie
suffered.
The
living conditions for Genie were deplorable at best. She was confined to a
small bedroom at the back of the house, usually harnessed to an infant’s
potty seat. Unclad except for the harness, Genie was left to sit on that
chair, unable to move anything except her fingers, hands, feet, and toes.
At night, if she was not forgotten, she was removed from her harness
only to be placed into another restraining garment, a sleeping bag fashioned
to act like a straight jacket. She was then placed in a bed with wire mesh
sides and a wire mesh cover overhead. These were her primary experiences for
13 years.
Since
the father had an intolerance for noise, there was no radio or TV and
conversation was little and at a low volume. Genie heard little to no language
outside her door, and did not receive practically any auditory stimulation,
aside from bathroom noises. The only exception was that one window in her room
was kept open several inches, so she may have heard some occasional
environmental noises. Genie’s father did not allow anyone to speak to her.
Early
on in her life, Genie learned to keep silent because her father would beat her
whenever she made noise, or he would bark and growl like a dog to warn her
that he was outside the door. Many wondered where Genie’s mother was at this
time. Records indicate that her mother had become blind, so the father and
brother were Genie’s primary caretakers.
Genie
was fed three times a day, if she wasn’t being punished. Her diet consisted
of baby foods, cereals, and an occasional soft-boiled egg. Genie lived this
life until she turned 13 ½ when, after a severe fight with Genie’s father,
Genie’s mother took Genie and left. They escaped to the grandmother’s
home, where she and Genie stayed for three weeks. While Genie’s mother was
applying for financial assistance, Genie was discovered and taken into
custody. Charges were filed against the parents, but on the day of the trial,
the father killed himself, leaving a note stating, “The world will never
understand.”
Genie
was admitted to a hospital for treatment. She was hardly human, salivating
copiously, incontinent of feces and urine, unable to stand erect, unable to
communicate with words, severely nearsighted, and weighing a mere 59 pounds at
54 inches tall. She was a strange, unsocialized, silent human being. The
question was what lay beneath the surface?
Susan
Curtiss was a graduate student of linguistics at the time Genie was discovered
and was given the opportunity to work with Genie. Curtiss and several other
doctors and professionals set out to rehabilitate and educate her to the
fullest extent possible.
Part
II (Chapters 6-11)
The
second half of the book reviews the methods of data collection and discoveries
concerning Genie’s linguistic development and language acquisition. The
primary focus of the research was to discover if and/or what language could
develop after the “critical period” since Genie wasn’t found until
adolescence. The “critical period” was proposed by American neurolinguist
Eric Lenneberg, claiming that there is a critical period for first language
acquisition from two years up through early childhood.
During the earliest observations, Genie was identified as having understood
only a few single words and negative command intonation. She appeared to
zero in on single words and ignore the sentences in which they occurred,
depending critically on gestures and other nonlinguistic cues to make sense of
the speech directed at her. Genie was faced with learning her first language
at the age of 13 years and 7 months.
From
continued rehabilitation, observation and testing, findings were varied and
difficult to interpret. Several doctors noted that in some ways her behavior
was that of a 2 year old, in others like a 5 year old, and in still others
like a 12-13 year old. This contradiction was further exacerbated by the
on-going debate on whether Genie was born brain damaged or not. Studies of
Genie’s brain showed extreme spindles that are characteristic of mental
retardation, but psychological tests measuring mental age, indicated that
every year after she had been found her mental age increased by one year, not
characteristic of mental retardation.
Over
the four years of the study, Genie was documented as having delayed responses,
lazy behavior, haplologies, ritualistic speech, reliance on gestures, and
limited sound production. In contrast, she appeared to be “tuning in” to
language by paying attention to conversations around her, and she began to use
language in new ways by being able to reflect about past events.
Curtiss
concluded that Genie appeared to be a right-hemisphere thinker, using the
right hemisphere for language. Neurolinguistic research suggests that this
nondominant hemisphere for language understands much more language than
previously thought, but it understands language only outside the rigors of
formal testing, and only when redundancies and extra linguistic cues remain
available.
Genie’s
language was abnormal in specific ways. For example, in Genie’s phonological
system, the rules are optional, and many substitutions and deletions distort
the phonological structure to a degree that at times makes Genie’s speech
almost impossible to understand. However, her substitutions are not random and
utilize classes of sounds. Vowels are not substituted for consonants and
consonants are not substituted for vowels. In another example, Genie can, in
effect, understand the meaning of everyday English sentences but she cannot
understand most grammatical rules. She was not able to put words together in a
normal, grammatical way. She might say something like, “Applesauce buy
store,” rather than, “We need to buy applesauce at the store.”
According to Curtiss, Genie’s language resembles that of other cases of
right hemisphere language as well as the language of those generally acquiring
language outside the “critical period,” supporting Lenneberg’s
“critical period” hypothesis and suggesting specific constraints and
limitations on the nature of language acquisition outside of this maturational
period. Genie is an “appositional” thinker, visually and tactilely
oriented, better at holistic than sequential, analytic thinking.
Curtiss left out important details in the book that raise several ethical
questions surrounding the study of Genie. The studies and testing for Genie
were funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, and David Rigler, a
scientist on Genie’s case, agreed to care for Genie, acting as a scientist,
therapist, and foster parent to Genie for four years. Rigler found it
difficult to juggle his many roles and did not accurately document the
research project. After several warnings from the NIMH, funding was stopped
for the Genie project, citing a failure to collect data in a scientifically
meaningful way. In the year following the loss of the research grant, the
Riglers ended their care for Genie. She currently lives in an adult foster
care home in southern, California. It’s at least the sixth home she has
lived in since the research project ended.
This leaves us with several questions: Did the team go as far as it could go
in treating Genie, or did the research get in the way? Was this case treated
ethically? What could or should have been done differently? What can it teach
us about the rewards and risks of conducting “a forbidden experiment?”