Secrets of the Wild Child 3

The movie illustrates the risk guitar took. More experienced doctors concluded Victor was profoundly retarded from birth. And unable to learn. It turned, though, believed that Victor had become retarded because of his years of living in the wild. He believed he could civilize Victor. It charged diary was worked with Victor makes this one of the most documented cases of wild children throughout history. In fact, the diary served as the basis for truffaut's movie called the wild child. In Los Angeles, truffaut's movie premiered at the lost felis theater in Hollywood. One of the strangest chapters of this story is the timing of the premiere. For truffaut's movie about history's most famous wild child, opened exactly one week after Jeannie was discovered. In true Hollywood fashion, the Genie team took advantage of this coincidence. The arrange their own private screening. In charge of this event, was hospital chief of psychiatry Howard handsome. 

Well, that afternoon at four 30, we left children's hospital and we paraded up the street. We had an entourage up the street to the lost felis theater. It was all inspiring to us because here was the first case that had been documented in any scientific way. And here we were having an opportunity to see a film portrayal of that. Here was history stamp of approval for daring to rehabilitate a wild child. Guitar inspired everyone at the screen. Afterwards, everybody was shocked and stunned. They just sat in silence for her bed because the film was so powerful and itself, and then the analogy with Genie began to hit. It was like here history was repeating itself and everybody there thought here is an opportunity to learn something, the screening was part of a special conference for which the Genie team invited consultants from all over the country. A government agency, the National Institute of mental health had agreed to fund a scientific project on Genie. 

Now it was time to focus the direction of research. It soon became clear, though, that participants were unlikely to agree on one course of action. Oh, we were off in a million directions. I mean, each expert each person in their own discipline thought, oh, wow. I can do this. I can do this. I can do that. We were flooded, flooded with our own associations and with the pursuits that each of us might have thought. Wow, look what we can do. Look what we might learn from this. A girl who has appeared out of nowhere. To bring all the proposed plans for Jeannie into focus, there was another player on the team, David rigler, a psychologist at children's hospital, wriggler two was hooked on Genie's case. I think everybody who came in contact with her was attracted to her. She had a quality of somehow connecting with people, which developed more and more, but was present really from the start. She had a way of reaching out without saying anything. But just somehow by the kind of look in her eyes, and people wanted to do things for her. Regular decided how to focus the research around the time of Genie's first birthday at children's hospital. Jeannie was now 14 years old. 

The timing was fitting because ritner wanted to know, could the clock be turned back for Jeannie, in particular, could a teenager still learn to talk? This had already been the subject of much debate, but the time Genie was discovered. It all began with Noam Chomsky, a young linguist at the Massachusetts institute of technology. Chomsky declared that we acquire language not just because we are taught it, but because we are born with the principles of language, they're in our genes, we have language Chomsky said because of nature, not just nurture. Then, along came a neuropsychologist who had his own twist to the theory. Eric Lennon agreed were born with the principles of language, but acclaimed there is a deadline for applying them. If a first language is an acquired by puberty, he said, it may be too late. Chomsky and Lindbergh rocked the field. They were hot. Linguistics was in. 

It was a perfect time to test the new ideas recalls linguist Alyssa Newport. What Lenin proposed is what's called the critical period hypothesis. And what he suggested is that there's a particular period in the life of humans when they're ripe for learning languages. What this hypothesis was looking for was some more direct evidence. But of course you don't do these experiments. One never wishes to deprive somebody of language during the critical period to see what happens. It happened that at that time, when that would have been the right thing for Lenin's hypothesis, Jeannie was discovered. No. Joe. This is why Susan Curtis joined the Genie gene. She was a graduate student in linguistics. She would put the critical period hypothesis to its first real test. This is one of the first video tapes of Curtis's work with Genie. A shark square. She wanted, it seemed to me almost desperately to recode her world with verbal labels. And sometimes we would just stand at a window when she would take my hand and point out the window at a panorama before us, and I wouldn't really know exactly what it was she wanted to know the word for, but she would persist until she at least got a new word. 

While Curtis tracked Genie's speech, James can't continued work on her emotional development. Kent was concerned that with the growing number of people involved in her case, Jeannie wouldn't be able to form single, dependable relationships. So he set out to be her surrogate parent. Who wanted to be part of her sort of ordinary life, so I would frequently be there in the morning when she had breakfast. And be there in the evening when she went to bed, read her a story, kiss her good night, turn off the lights and go, and then do things during the day. When she became when she had sort of the important things that she had to go through like physical exams or things like that, I would come along with her as though she were my child. She was very special to me. Did you feel you loved her? Well, Doctor John supposed to love their patients. But if you could find a word that meant the same thing. Yes. Yeah, I was very attached to her.