THE WILD CHILDREN

FERAL CHILDREN
WILD CHILDREN

• Also known as Feral children or wolf children

• Have grown up with minimal or no human contact
• They have been raised by animals
• They have been confined and denied any interaction with people
DEFINITON

• Feral (Latin Fera=wild animal)

• =wild, undomesticated
• Feral children
• Human children- from a very young age have lived in isolation from human
contact
• Have remained unaware of social behavior and unexposed of human
language
THE CRTICIAL PERIOD HYPOTHESIS

• Before age 2, the language acquisition is not possible, because the brain is
not sufficiently mature
• After puberty the natural language acquisition is not obtainable because the brain is
physiologically mature.
• There are two necessary requirements to acquire language:
- human brain
-sufficent exposure to language during this critical period between the age of two
and puberty
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

• Myths, legends and fictional have stories depicted feral children reared by
wild animals such as wolves and bears.
• Example: the story of Romolus and Remus
SOME CASES OF FERAL CHILDREN

• Feral children can be subdivided into 3 classes:

- Isolated children
- Confined children
- Children isolated by animals
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WILD CHILDREN

• Crawling
• Mute
Szöveg beírásához
• Hairy kattintson ide

• Wild
REAL CASES

• Wild Peter 1725-1785 Germany

• Kaspar Hauser 1812-1833 Germany
• Kamala and Amala died on 1921
and 1929 in India
• Genie 1957 (age 54) United States
KAMALA AND AMALA

• Two little girls were found under the take of a wolf in India in 1920
• They were taken to an orphanage
• Kamala was 8 years old, while Amala was 18 months old, behaved like a small wild animal.
• They remained on all four.
• Ate raw meat
• Attacked the other children
• Amala died one year later, while Kamala lived in the orphanage for nine years
• Kamala acquire small vocabulary
GENIE
• From the age of 20 month, she lived nearly total isolation
• Her father did not speak to her, just barking
• Genie appeared to be 6 or 7 years old, actually she was 13 years old.
• It was revealed that she was locked away in a room alone for over 10 years.
GENIE

• At first, people could hardly believe that she is 13 years old.

• While she seemed to understand some words, she just can say "stop it", "no
more".
• She had a strange bunny like walk
• She could not chew solid food and could hardly swallow.
GENIE

• Genie proved incapable of learning language beyond very simple sentences,

sientists first thought she might be mentaally handicapped; but she proved to
be quite intelligent, scoring perfectly on an adult-level test that measured
spatal abilities, and scoring the highest recorded result ever on tests that
measure a person's ability to make sense out of chaos and to see patterns.
• Today she lives anonymously in an assisted living facility in Southern
California.
THE INTEREST IN WILD CHILDREN

• We can learn some things:

• Origins of language and other human attributes
• How close is human nature to animal nature?
• What aspects of human nature are genetic, and what aspects are learned?
• Could we learn how to speak to animals, or could we teach animals to speak
to humans?
• Thank you for your attention