genie' curtiss 1981

Genie' Curtiss 1981 Case Study

Thank You!

by:

Jose Montoya

Mirakal Jackson

2B

Continued

• The test on Genie's brain found persistent discrepancies far larger than that of people with normal fully developed brains.

new hypothesis on brain lateralization and the effects on the language development and cognitive process.

• Genie after a couple of moths of being discovered she had improved her verbal communication skills and her ability to non-verbally express her emotions and desires.

Case Study

• Genie became popular after she was transferred to the hospital for she would do the "bunny walk"

• Her case became even more widen to provide evidence supporting the theory that humans have a critical age threshold for language acquisition.

Critical period: language was thought to be from the age of two until the

beginning of puberty, whilst the brain was maturing.

Sensitive period: the optimum periods for a skill or attribute to be learned, but allows for some leeway outside of that period where it can still be done.

Video

Genie Curtiss

Early Childhood

"stop it"

"no more"

• Born in 1957 Arcadia, California

• Her father assumed she suffered from retardation.

• When she reached 20 months of age her father isolated her more.

• Her father made sure Genie's mother and brother had zero contact with her.

• Kept her tied up to her crib and many times forgotten

Continued

Dr. Susan Curtiss

• Genie's isolation prevented her from being exposed to any significant amount of speech.

• Main fields: psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics
• Her work is focused on:
• grammatical development in children
• maturational constraints on 1st language development
• hemisperic specialization for language and language acquistion
• modularity of grammar
• From the Department of Linguistics in Los Angeles California
• Head of the Genie Case Study

Resulting in her not acquiring her language.

• Genie was almost entirely mute, commanding few words and short phrases nearly all being negative such as "no more" or "stop it."

• Her mother took her to a welfare worker who upon finding that she was 13 years of age notified the sheriff's department

Sources

Dato, D. (1997, January 1). Georgetown university round table on language and luingistics. Retrieved February 12, 2015, from http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/curtiss/1975 - An update on the linguistic development of Genie.pdf

Genie. (2008, January 1). Retrieved February 12, 2015, from http://genie.wikia.com/wiki/Genie

Harvey, J. (n.d.). Brain Lateralization. Retrieved February 12, 2015, from http://theorderoftime.com/politics/cemetery/stout/h/brain-la.htm

CURTISS, S. 1981a Dissociations between language and cognition: cases and implications. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 2, 15-30.

CURTISS, S. 1981b Feral children. Mental Retardation 12, 129-161.

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