An introduction to

Psycholinguistics
Week 5
Teacher: Zeineb Ayachi
How children learn language
Wild and isolated children and the critical age issue
for language learning
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 4.1 Victor: the Wild Boy of Aveyron

 4.2 Genie: raised in isolation
 4.3 Isabelle: confinement with a mute mother
 4.4 Chelsea: began to learn language at age 32
 4.5 Helen Keller: the renowned deaf and blind girl
 4.7 A critical age for first-language learning?
 4.7.1 Why did only Isabelle and Helen fully learn language?
 4.7.2 Two major factors governing language learning
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 4.7.3 Why did Genie not progress more than she did?
 4.7.4 Chelsea: insufficient evidence
 4.7.5 The achievements of Isabelle and Helen
 4.7.6 Is there a critical age for first-language learning?

 Introduction

 It seems that people have always wondered about whether language is something that is as
natural to humans as walking and smiling.
 They have also wondered whether, even without experiencing language, children are able
to produce speech on their own.
 People are still very much interested in these and in other related questions as well, such as
whether there is an age beyond which a person is unable to learn a first or a second
language.
 Over the past few centuries there have been a number of reported cases of children raised
by wolves, dogs, pigs, sheep, and other animals.
 Introduction

 These children are known as wild or feral children

 On a different level, there are cases of children who have been kept in confinement or
isolation by their parents or others, and consequently were not exposed to language.
Studying such cases might provide insight into certain psycholinguistic questions.
 Wild and isolated children and the critical age
issue for language learning

 4.1 Victor: the Wild Boy of Aveyron

 in January of the year 1800 when a boy was captured by hunters in the woods near the
village of Saint-Sernin in the Aveyron district of France.
 The boy appeared to be 11 or 12 years old, was naked except for what was left of a tattered
shirt, and he made no sounds other than guttural animal-like noises. He seemed to have
survived on his own for years in the wild
 Itard, Victor’s teacher, devoted five years to Victor.
 He made many attempts but failed
 Wild and isolated children and the critical
age issue for language learning
 4.2 Genie: raised in isolation
 Genie was discovered in the early 1970s in the Los Angeles area of California. She was 13
years old and had been locked in a small room in her house by her father for the
preceding 12 years!
 After just a few months of care, however, Genie changed considerably.
 While her original speech production had been limited to a few utterances such as ‘No-
more’ and ‘Stoppit’, by the end of a few months she had acquired the words for
hundreds of objects! She had an intense curiosity about the names of things in the
world around her.
 Wild and isolated children and the critical
age issue for language learning
 Genie, like Victor, was not able to acquire a normal level of language despite receiving a
great amount of care, attention, instruction, and linguistic input.
 Genie was finally placed in a home for retarded adults.
 4.3 Isabelle: confinement with a mute mother
 Isabelle, because of her confinement with a mute mother, did not begin to learn language
until she gained her freedom at 61/2 years of age.
 After only 20 months, Isabelle ‘has progressed from her first spoken word to full length
sentences .
 Wild and isolated children and the critical
age issue for language learning
 4.4 Chelsea: began to learn language at age 32
 When Chelsea was born, her family thought that she was deaf, and Initially misdiagnosed
her as retarded
 When, at the age of 32, her hearing was properly tested, it was discovered that she was not
totally deaf but only partially hearing-impaired.
 Though Chelsea has developed rapidly in vocabulary and the use of language in a wide
range of speech acts (complaints, requests) and social rituals (greetings), she was
unable to form grammatically correct utterances and to remain on topic.
 Wild and isolated children and the critical
age issue for language learning
 4.5 Helen Keller: the renowned deaf and blind girl
 Keller was born normal and then, due to illness, she became deaf and blind at the age of 19
months.
 Thus, before tragedy struck, she had already experienced some degree of language learning
and would probably have had some degree of comprehension and production.
 Helen learned language through touch and later even learned to speak. This was
accomplished by Helen’s directly touching the speech articulators around the face
(mouth, lips, vocal cords, throat, etc.) of people.
 Wild and isolated children and the critical
age issue for language learning
 4.7 A critical age for first-language learning?
 4.7.1 Why did only Isabelle and Helen fully learn language?
 Why is it that Isabelle and Helen learned language to the full but Victor, Genie, and
Chelsea did not?
 Why didn’t Victor, Genie, and Chelsea learn more than they did, particularly
considering their teachers’ dedication to their welfare and their use of evidently
sound educational ideas?
 One thing is certain, and that is: without exposure to language, children will not
acquire language.
 Children need some form of exposure, be it in the form of speech, signs, writing, or
touch, before language learning can occur and that exposure should be offered as
early as possible in the child’s life.
 Wild and isolated children and the critical
age issue for language learning
 4.7.2 Two major factors governing language learning
 In reviewing the details of the cases of Victor, Genie, Isabelle, Chelsea, and Helen, we can
identify two major factors that could have operated to influence their varying success
in language learning.
 These relate to
ü (1) the age at which exposure to language began, and
ü (2) the extent of any physical, psychological, and social trauma prior to exposure to
language.
 Wild and isolated children and the critical
age issue for language learning
 Genie’s faulty speech production ability in terms of pronunciation may be related to factors
that operate in the learning of second-language pronunciation by ordinary people,
where it has been found that the ability to control certain muscles of the body, in
particular the articulators of speech (the tongue, mouth, vocal cords, etc.), generally
begins to decline around 10 to 12 years of age.
 The fact that Genie had not used speech from infancy until she was 13 years old probably
put her at a greater disadvantage than would be the case for a typical second-language
learner of the same age.
 At least the ordinary second-language learner would, in using his or her first language,
have had the benefit of exercising the articulators of speech for over a decade.
 Wild and isolated children and the critical
age issue for language learning
 4.7.5 The achievements of Isabelle and Helen
 One thing Helen did have that some of the other children did not is a loving family.
 Even during her period of language deprivation, she was a member of a family who did
their utmost on her behalf so that she could enjoy life.
 Isabelle, too, although she was confined with her mother, could benefit from the affection
that her mother had for her.
 So, the critical variable here may be the affection and social support which both Helen and
Isabelle were able to experience.
 This may have allowed them to develop intellectually despite their language deprivation.
 Wild and isolated children and the critical
age issue for language learning
 4.7.6 Is there a critical age for first-language learning?
 Language exposure and teaching began for Isabelle at 6 years old and for Helen at 7 years.
 On the other hand, Victor and Genie, who were almost twice as old as these girls when
discovered, did not learn as much language as Helen and Isabelle did, nor did Chelsea.
 This could be, as some theorists, such as Lenneberg (1967), have suggested, due to the
biological maturation of the brain.
 However, there are too many unknown factors .
 Certainly, the critical age, if there is one, could not be much younger than 6 or 7 years since that
would exclude Isabelle and Helen, who in fact did learn language after that age.