Appendix:

The Stories of Deprived Children Language Acquisition:

Victor: the Wild Boy of Aveyron:1

The world had been shaken by story of Victor, a wild boy, who was captured
in 1800 in the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in the Aveyron district of
France. He 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.
His general appearance and behavior were typical of the wild men of popular
legend and he seemed to have been abandoned originally but at what age or by
whom could not be ascertained. Attempts to trace his personal history failed and
nothing could be uncovered of his life before he was discovered.
The fate of Victor changed when he was being educated by a scholar named
Sicard, who was the noted director of the Institute of Deaf-Mutes in Paris at
that moment. Sicard was very eager to investigate Victors condition and later
determined to educate him the ability to speak. At first, Victor was held by the
state as an orphan child. With his efforts Sicard managed to bring Victor to his
institution and tried to train him to speak for quite some time.
Sicard found out that the condition of Victor was almost the same like
children who underwent language deprivation due to lack of normal contact with
others and deafness. He was eager to use the method of teaching deaf children
that had been used for years in his institution. However, his high optimism soon
faded away when he discovered the behavior of Victor was not the same with
other children in the institution and he also failed to learn language. After only a
few months, the institute issued a report stating that there had been no
progress with the boy and that none could reasonably be expected. They
regarded him as being unteachable and gave up on him. Fortunately, however, the
boys education was then taken over by another eager educator, the creative and
dedicated, Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard. Itard set up an ambitious programme for
the boy, with goals included social as well as language training. Victor succeed in
learning many new things such as taking long walks, taking baths, dressing himself
1

Danny D. Steinberg, An Introduction to Psycholinguistics (London and New York: Longman,

1993), pp. 50-62. Some wordings of the stories have been slightly altered for the sake of
succinctness and key points encapsulated in each story.

and setting the table. However, to teach him to speak was very frustrating job.
Though Victor could distinguish speech sound around him, he failed to pronounce
the words properly. Most of the time he poorly pronounced the words being
taught by his instructor. He only managed to pick up a handful of words with
great difficulty.
Knowing the condition of Victor, Itard changed the focus of his teaching on
him. He shifted from teaching him speech to teaching him communicate with
alphabets. Victors progress seemed much better with alphabets than with verbal
words. He could understand the relationship between written symbols arranged
alphabetically with their meanings. However, the ability of Victor to express
himself in writing was very restricted for a person of his age.
The final outcome of Itards mission was that he finally came to the
conclusion that Victor was declared unable to speak though in some ways he
understood communication through writing. After five years, Itard stopped his
attempts to teach Victor to speak and later arranged the boy to live with
Madame Gurin, Itards assistant until Victors death 18 years later in 1828.
Throughout the remaining years of his life Victor continued to be mute.

Genie: raised in solitary and confinement

The case of Genie (a pseudonym) was a case of a child who was mistreated and
deliberately made without language contact. Her own father had abused her to the
level that difficult to be talked about. For almost the past 12 years she had to
endure unbearable sufferings such as being locked in a room alone, beaten up
mercilessly when she made a slight noise when she was being fed. Her case was known
by the authorities and public in American in the late 1970s when her mother escaped
from the house together with her. Her father committed suicide on the day when he
was to be put on trial for mistreating her. Genie was 13 years old when her mother
managed to escape from their house.
At the time of her discovery, Genie was in a pitiful physical condition.
Furthermore, she had been beaten into virtual silence and appeared to have no
language. Based on information later provided by her mother, the girl already begun
to acquire language just prior to her confinement, which was when she was 20 months
of age.

After her release from confinement, it was evidence that to some extent Genie
had some ability to recognize sounds and understand them.

However, she didnt

understand simple sentence though she could respond to some sounds such mother
and bunny. The way she communicated with others was through gestures and
intonation of words. Batteries of psychological tests indicated that her cognitive
abilities were little more than those of a 2-year-old, with her language displaying
many of the same characteristics of 2-years-old as they go through the initial stages
of language learning.
During the first five years after her liberation, Genie was cared for by an
affectionate foster mother and was given much attention by concerned researchers.
As a result, she developed well socially. She enjoyed going to stores, walking about,
playing games and became quite fond of music.
After just a few months of care, however, Genie changed considerably. She
grew, gained weight and strength and was able to go on long walks. While her original
speech production had been limited to a few utterances such as no-more and
stoppit, by the end 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. Soon she began to understand some of the language used in her presence.
A year after Genie enjoyed her freedom; her speech ability was subject to the
tests of scholars who were interested in her progress. The series of linguistic tests
showed major progress of her ability using language. However, there were some
evidence of long isolation and severe punishment caused the awkward language
performance of Genie. For instance, she often gave a delayed response to simple
commands. Another example was she spoke very little; mainly speaking only when
spoke to.
Genies language acquisition was studied for about eight years, after which time
she made little progress. Her language ability, both in terms of understanding and
production, remained below normal and her speech continued to be ungrammatical.
Genie, like Victor, was not able to acquire a normal level of language despite receiving
a great amount of care and attention.

Helen: the famous deaf and blind girl

Any discussion of language deprivation must include the case of Helen Keller, a
person who was blind and deaf since infancy. Actually Keller was born normal then,
due to illness; she began deaf and blind at the age of 19 months. Thus, before
3

tragedy stuck, she had already had experienced the initial stages of language
acquisition. That, however, the extent of language exposure until six years later, at
age 7, when Anne Sullivan Marcy was engaged by Kellers parents to teach her
language. In spite of Kellers seemingly overwhelming sensory handicaps, Sullivan
Marcys efforts to teach Helen language through the sense of touch were successful.
Helen learned language through touch and later even to speak, by directly touching
the voice articulators (mouth, lips, vocal chords through the throat, etc.) of Sullivan
Marcy and others.
However, because she was unable to hear and thus could not receive any
auditory feedback, her own speech was somewhat strange; she spoke in a highpitched somewhat monotone, voice. She further learned to interpret and produce
Braille. To crown these accomplishments Keller went on to graduate from Radcliffe
(Harvard University) with honors and to become an acclaimed lecturer and writer in
the service of handicapped people. Her extraordinary experience on how to learn to
speak and pursue her professional career can be read in her autobiography, The

Story of My Life.
How is it that Keller was able to attain the level of language excellence that
she did? It might be argued that Kellers success in language acquisition was
beneficially affected by the relatively brief encounter she had with speech in her
infancy. However, the fact that after the lengthy six-year period of not being
exposed to language, it took as long as it did for her to learn first wordwhen she
had to realize that a sense experience (the feeling of something being drawn in her
hand) symbolized an object (water) in the worldmay indicate that her pre-illness
exposure to language was of minimal benefit. Still, it is possible that her early
language experience in infancy did have a beneficial structural effect on her brain
and mind which served to assist her later.

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