If you only care about helping Genie, then you wouldn't do a lot of the scientific research. So, what are you going to do? Genie is believed to be alive and living in an adult foster home as a ward of the state of California. However, she said that when she calls the authorities, they inform her that Genie is well.
Yet, when journalist Russ Rymer saw Genie at her 27 th birthday party, he painted a much bleaker picture. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights.
Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. By Cynthia Vinney. Key Takeaways: Genie Wiley Genie Wiley was abused and neglected for over a decade until she was discovered in when she was 13 years old. Known as the feral child, Genie became an important subject of research. Of special interest was whether she could acquire language, as she was no longer within the "critical period" for language development.
Genie's case presented an ethical dilemma between prioritizing her care or prioritizing research on her development. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format.
Vinney, Cynthia. The social worker discovered that the woman and her husband had kept their 13 year old daughter Genie locked away in almost total isolation during her childhood. Genie could not speak or stand upright. At night she was placed in a kind of straightjacket and caged in a crib with wire mesh sides and a cover. Whenever Genie made a noise her father beat her. He never communicated with her in words; instead he growled at her and barked at her instead. After she was rescued she spent a number of years in excessive rehabilitation programs including speech and physical therapy.
She eventually learned to walk and to use the toilet. She also eventually learned to recognise many words and speak in basic sentences. Genie's case presented researchers with a unique opportunity. If given an enriched learning environment, could she overcome her deprived childhood and learn language even though she had missed the critical period?
If she could, it would suggest that the critical period hypothesis of language development was wrong. If she could not, it would indicate that Lenneberg's theory was correct. Despite scoring at the level of a 1-year-old upon her initial assessment, Genie quickly began adding new words to her vocabulary. She started by learning single words and eventually began putting two words together much the way young children do. Curtiss began to feel that Genie would be fully capable of acquiring language.
After a year of treatment, she even started putting three words together occasionally. In children going through normal language development, this stage is followed by what is known as a language explosion. Children rapidly acquire new words and begin putting them together in novel ways. Unfortunately, this never happened for Genie. Her language abilities remained stuck at this stage and she appeared unable to apply grammatical rules and use language in a meaningful way.
At this point, her progress leveled off and her acquisition of new language halted. While Genie was able to learn some language after puberty, her inability to use grammar which Chomsky suggests is what separates human language from animal communication offers evidence for the critical period hypothesis. Of course, Genie's case is not so simple. Not only did she miss the critical period for learning language, but she was also horrifically abused. She was malnourished and deprived of cognitive stimulation for most of her childhood.
Researchers were also never able to fully determine if Genie suffered from pre-existing cognitive deficits. As an infant, a pediatrician had identified her as having some type of mental delay. So researchers were left to wonder whether Genie had suffered from cognitive deficits caused by her years of abuse or if she had been born with some degree of mental retardation. Psychiatrist Jay Shurley helped assess Genie after she was first discovered, and he noted that since situations like hers were so rare, she quickly became the center of a battle between the researchers involved in her case.
Arguments over the research and the course of her treatment soon erupted. Genie occasionally spent the night at the home of Jean Butler, one of her teachers. After an outbreak of measles, Genie was quarantined at her teacher's home. Butler soon became protective and began restricting access to Genie.
Other members of the team felt that Butler's goal was to become famous from the case, at one point claiming that Butler had called herself the next Anne Sullivan, the teacher famous for helping Helen Keller learn to communicate.
Eventually, Genie was removed from Butler's care and went to live in the home of psychologist David Rigler, where she remained for the next four years. Despite some difficulties, she appeared to do well in the Rigler household. She enjoyed listening to classical music on the piano and loved to draw, often finding it easier to communicate through drawing than through other methods. NIMH withdrew funding in , due to the lack of scientific findings. Linguist Susan Curtiss had found that while Genie could use words, she could not produce grammar.
She could not arrange these words in a meaningful way, supporting the idea of a critical period in language development. Rigler's research was disorganized and largely anecdotal. Without funds to continue the research and care for Genie, she was moved from the Rigler's care. In , Genie returned to live with her birth mother. When her mother found the task too difficult, Genie was moved through a series of foster homes, where she was often subjected to further abuse and neglect.
Unfortunately, the progress that had occurred during her first stay had been severely compromised by the subsequent treatment she received in foster care. Genie was afraid to open her mouth and had regressed back into silence. While the lawsuit was eventually settled, it raised important questions about the treatment and care of Genie. Did the research interfere with the girl's therapeutic treatment? Today, Genie lives in an adult foster care home somewhere in southern California.
Little is known about her present condition, although an anonymous individual hired a private investigator to track her down in and described her as happy. But this contrasts with other reports. Psychiatrist Jay Shurley visited her on her 27th and 29th birthdays and characterized her as largely silent, depressed , and chronically institutionalized. If you want to do rigorous science, then Genie's interests are going to come second some of the time.
If you only care about helping Genie, then you wouldn't do a lot of the scientific research. So, what are you going to do? To make matters worse, the two roles, scientist and therapist , were combined in one person, in her case. So, I think future generations are going to study Genie's case not only for what it can teach us about human development but also for what it can teach us about the rewards and the risks of conducting 'the forbidden experiment. Ever wonder what your personality type means?
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