When was genie born

From to , a multidisciplinary team used Genie as a case study -- "Developmental Consequence of Extreme Social Isolation" -- under the direction of Dr. David Rigler. The team was mesmerized by her charisma and curiosity. Susie Curtiss, just out of graduate school in theoretical linguistics, was a member of the team and worked with Genie on language acquisition. Because of the Genie study, doctors now know that grammatical development needs linguistic stimulation.

When children are isolated from language, a window closes and they lose the ability to speak in sentences. Genie was just amazing. Curtiss described Genie as "highly communicative," despite the fact that she spoke fewer than 20 words at the onset.

She often made her needs known by gesturing or other means, and she loved being stroked and hugged, and learned to hug back, according to Curtiss. When she was upset, at first she had a "tearless cry," but eventually she "showed emotion very clearly. Big Wood. Genie Cry.

Believing that a loving home would help Genie's development, some of the specialists became her foster parents. At first psychologist James Kent became a father figure. He had argued unsuccessfully that Genie should not be separated from her mother, the one emotional attachment in the child's life. But Butler, who has since died, became obsessed with making a name for herself, Curtiss said in a documentary called "The Secret of the Wild Child. According to Curtiss, Butler told colleagues she wanted to be the next Annie Sullivan -- the so-called "miracle worker" who taught language to the blind and deaf Helen Keller.

Soon, team members were divided into combative camps, accusing one another of exploitation. Butler criticized the team members for overtesting the child and other infractions. Rigler eventually asked Butler to leave, according to Kent. In , Rigler and his wife, Marilyn, became Genie's legal foster parents. She learned sign language and continued to progress. But by , NIMH officials -- citing poor organization and lack of results -- refused to renew the study grant.

The Riglers, who had received compensation as foster parents, then ended their care. ABC News was unable to find current contact information for Rigler, who is now 87 and reportedly in failing health.

But in a NOVA documentary, the Riglers said they assumed the foster care arrangement was "temporary. Genie was sent to foster care homes for special needs children, including one that was particularly religious. She immediately regressed. 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? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Schoneberger T. Three myths from the language acquisition literature.

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior. American Psychological Association. Language acquisition device. Create a New Entry. How to Create a Tour. Create a New Tour. About Clio. Clio in the Classroom. Clio for Historic Preservation. Clio for Museums. Grant Resources. Support Clio. The story of Genie Wiley is breathtaking and one of cruelest isolation stories in the world.

She was born in and when she was 20 months old, her father Clark Wiley decided to isolate his daughter completely. Clark Wiley had survived a difficult life and his abuse of his own daughter lasted until she was 13 years old. During these years, her father mentally and physical abused his child and deprived her of human contact.