Feral Children Case Study

Children that are raised in complete isolation from human contact and socialization are considered feral children. These children are sometimes raised by animals or many times confined to small rooms or dungeons. In these cases, the children share a common absence of human parents or caregivers to offer socialization, language and love. Feral children offer a great fascination because there is still a lot unknown about their development and many linguists and sociologists alike are interested to understand whether nature or nurture effect children’s development. Genie Wiley and Oxana Malaya are two children that were raised in isolation from human contact and now have long lasting development issues from their childhood. Genie Wiley was born

Most importantly genie was still wearing diapers and couldn’t talk. She could only understand a few works but did not utter them herself and had little comprehension of grammatical structure. Comprehension tests were regularly administered and designed by Susan Curtis who was directly involved in research of Genie’s linguistic development, and Susan was also a voice for Genie and was best for her sake. “From this brief summary of Genie’s linguistic development we can conclude the following: (1) When she first emerged from isolation, Genie, a child of 13 years, 9 months had not acquired language; (2) Since there is no evidence of any biological deficiencies, one may assume this was due to the social and linguistic isolation which occurred during 1 I years of her life; (3) Since her emergence she has been acquiring her first language primarily by “exposure” alone. This is revealed both by her own speech and by her comprehension of spoken language. (4) Her cognitive development has exceeded her linguistic