There seems to be a fond literary tradition surrounding children who were raised in the wild (usually courtesy of kindly animals). We have the Roman myth of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a she-wolf after they were abandoned, Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli being raised by wolves (yes, it was a book before it became a Disney movie) and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan being raised by apes. Unfortunately, the actual reality surrounding feral children tends not to be so entertaining. In 1797, France was in upheaval due to the events of the French Revolution. For that reason, news of a wild boy who had been captured near Toulouse and who vanished again after a week or so of being cared for in a local woman’s house probably escaped public notice. He was not heard of again until three years later when he apparently emerged from the woods on his own. While he was estimated to be twelve years of age, absolutely nothing else was known about him. The scars on his body and his inability to speak suggested that he had lived in the woods on his own for most of his life (no kindly she-wolf for him). The discovery of a wild boy seemed like a perfect research opportunity given the ongoing scientific debate on the difference between humans and animals. The boy was named Victor and sent to the National Institute of the Deaf both for research and to train him to speak. Although Victor could hear, the Institute was considered the best setting for him since speech training was an important part of the education that the deaf students received. It was at the Institute that a young medical student named Jean Marc Gaspard Itard took personal charge of Victor and attempted to train him to become human. And it worked... at first. Victor made great progress in learning simple etiquette and self-care but language proved to be a major stumbling block. Despite Itard’s patient teaching, Victor only learned the words for milk and God and never progressed to the point where he could live on his own. He died in 1828.
It was on the basis of Itard’s research with Victor that the idea of critical periods arose. A critical period is defined as a specific point in a organism’s development when environmental experiences can shape the organism’s later development. In Victor’s case, it meant that he had been deprived of the opportunity to learn language at a critical stage in his early childhood and later language training failed for that reason. Countless introductory psychology and linguistics texts cite Victor as a case study in early language development (it was certainly in the text we used in my introductory psychology course). Victor was even the basis for a Francois Truffaut movie that came out in 1970.
Victor was hardly the only example of his kind. In an appalling case that attracted widespread publicity at the time, a women entered a welfare office in California on November 4, 1970 with a seemingly autistic daughter who did not appear to be older than seven years of age. Upon discovering that the girl (later named Genie to protect her anonymity) was actually thirteen and the victim of horrendous abuse, a full investigation was launched. It was discovered that Genie’s father had kept her restrained in her bedroom from the age of twenty months with no access to language and even beat her whenever she tried to vocalize. The mother, who was partially blind, was unable to protect her daughter until finally seeking help. Genie was found to have a vocabulary of no more than twenty words at the age of thirteen. Despite active training and placement in various foster homes (including numerous setbacks and allegations of later abuse), Genie never made a successful transition to adult life and continues to live in sheltered accommodation.
There are numerous other examples of abandoned or neglected children who failed to develop normally. There is also an extensive literature on issues relating to early life deprivation and the impact that it can have on a child’s later development. While true cases of feral children are relatively rare, it's hard not to wonder about the millions of street children found the world over who live lives that are just as tenuous as what Victor experienced in the wild. Will they ever become successfully integrated into society after being deprived of important childhood learning experiences?
Some damage never heals.
Interesting post, however, it would seem to me that street children still are exposed to socialization skills among humans that a feral child would be lacking.
Posted by: risingrainbow | October 26, 2007 at 11:00 PM
It can certainly be argued that street children are undersocialized. They can form into gangs and access certain types of social services (depending on the available resources). Some countries are more hostile to street children than others and the risks they face can be greater. Whether these children will ever be able to make a successful transition to adulthood is definitely open to question.
Posted by: Romeo Vitelli | October 27, 2007 at 10:20 AM
A number of reactions:
1) Recoiling. Because the implicit fear for those of us who were abused is that if there was a critical period--what may we never be able to recover from and/or what skills may we never be able to learn?
2) Realization I'm doing just fine.
3) Curiosity. Wondering if the critical period is about the capacity to learn a given skill OR if it's about critical periods when the motivation will be sufficiently strong to learn those skills. (This matters because if it's an issue of motivation, one might be able to find a solution.)
4) A chilling sense of the implications that there are so many areas of the world where kids are forced by war or poverty or other circumstances to essentially be feral.
Posted by: April_optimist | October 27, 2007 at 04:25 PM