Case Study Genie Feral Child

1) Genie is considered a feral child. That means that she has lived most of her childhood in severe isolation from people. She was isolated from a lot of human interaction as a result from abuse and her father not liking loud noises. This meant that Genie spent most of her childhood sitting for long periods of time and only had interaction with her mother when it was feeding time. Genie was discovered at the age of 13. Genie is a special case for the field of speech-language pathology because she is the oldest feral child found in recent history. Genie was past the age of most normal developing children. She had not acquired language through interaction with others or being immersed in an environment where she was speaking. So for her to learn language would be a test to many to see if one could acquire such knowledge after the critical age period of which the brain has localized functions for each hemisphere
2) Genie was the eldest feral child in modern times. She was at the pubescent stage in life and having to start over and acquire language like normal developing …show more content…
This means around the time a typical child reaches that age they should have gained enough knowledge about the language being learned. The case with Genie is that she is way past the critical age and according to this theory Genie should be able to grasp her first language that she is learning. Genie shows typical language development in a two year old child but her comprehension far surpasses her speech production. Much like a typical person we are able to understand far more than we can speak and Genie provide that proof when she taking these test on how sound production and her comprehension. She keeps defying the notion that one is not able to grasp the language after a certain age and since Genie is an adolescent then she should be able to acquire language but she does