Comment on the story of Genie Wiley.

There are many ethical concerns surrounding Genie's story. Arguments among those in charge of Genie's care and rehabilitation reflect some of these concerns. 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," suggested psycholinguist documentary focused on her life. In Genie's case, the role of researcher and therapist were combined in one person. While Genie's story may be studied for its implications in our understanding of language acquisition and development, it is also a case that will continue to be studied over its serious ethical issues. 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.

Genie Wiley's story perhaps leaves us with more questions than answers. Though it was difficult for Genie to learn language, she was able to communicate through body language, music, and art once she was in a safe home environment. Unfortunately, we don't know what her progress could have been had adequate care not been taken away from her. Genie's story raises questions about how we can better address the needs of child abuse survivors, as well as how we can learn from them without exploiting their cases or disrupting their care. 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 had any 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 experienced cognitive deficits caused by her years of abuse or if she had been born with some degree of intellectual disability. After assessing Genie's emotional and cognitive abilities, I described her as "the most profoundly damaged child I've ever seen Genie's life is a wasteland." Her silence and inability to use language made it difficult to assess her mental abilities, but on tests, she scored at about the level of a one-year-old. She soon began to make rapid progression in specific areas, quickly learning how to use the toilet and dress herself. Over the next few months, she began to experience more developmental progress but remained poor in areas such as language. She enjoyed going out on day trips outside of the hospital and explored her new environment with an intensity that amazed her caregivers and strangers alike.

I think I can see the effects of isolation when Genie Wiley was discovered at the age of thirteen, she was in a state of physical and mental decline due to her extreme isolation. Her physical condition had deteriorated significantly, as she had not been exposed to any form of stimulation or nutrition since infancy. She was unable to walk, and had difficulty controlling her body movements which were often jerky and uncoordinated. Cognitively, Genie’s development had been severely stunted. She did not understand concepts such as time, space and color and could only communicate through rudimentary sounds. Her language abilities were far behind what would be expected for a thirteen-year-old. In addition, Genie exhibited signs of extreme emotional fragility: she would often react with fear to even the slightest stimuli, such as being touched or spoken to by someone unfamiliar. Genie Wiley was separated from any form of socialization and society for the first 13 years of her life. Her intensely abusive father and helpless mother so neglected Wiley that she hadn’t learned to speak and her growth was so stunted that she looked like she was no more than eight years old. Her intense trauma proved something of a godsend to scientists of various fields including psychology and linguistics, though they were later accused of exploiting the child for their research on learning and development. But Genie Wiley’s case did beg the question: What does it mean to be human.

In conclusion, I believe that the case of Genie confirms that there is a certain window of opportunity that sets the limit for when you can become relatively fluent in a language. Of course, if you already are fluent in another language, the brain is already primed for language acquisition and you may well succeed in becoming fluent in a second or third language. If you have no experience with grammar, however, Broca’s area remains relatively hard to change: you cannot learn grammatical language production later on in life.”