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