There are many cases of children growing up in wild with little contact with others or completely isolated from society. But few people have attracted so much attention from the public and scientific community like the little girl Ginny Willy. She was locked in her bedroom almost

There are many cases of children growing up in wild with little contact with others or completely isolated from society. But few people have attracted so much attention from the public and scientific community like the little girl Ginny Willy. She was locked in her bedroom almost her entire childhood, isolated and abused for more than a decade.

Ginni's case is one of the first cases to test the theory of the critical period. Can children who grew up in an environment of extreme scarcity and social isolation develop language? Can a good environment make up for the terrible past?

Ginni's story

Early life (1957-1970)

Ginni was naked and tied to a potty chair, and could only move her hands and feet. As long as she makes a sound, her father will hit her. Her father, mother and brother rarely talk to her. Her father's interaction with her was also limited to yelling or roaring.

Discovery and Research (1970-1975)

Ginny's story was exposed on November 4, 1970 in Los Angeles, California, USA. When Ginny's mother seeks help from outside for her own health reasons, an social worker discovered Ginny, 13-year-old. Authorities conducted an investigation and soon discovered that most of the child's childhood was locked in a small room and was often tied to a potty chair.

In order to protect the girl's identity and privacy, she was named Ginni in the case file. Ginny means elves, and elves are creatures that crawl out of a bottle. They appear in human society after childhood. They are creatures without human childhood.

Ginni's parents were both accused of abuse, but Ginni's father committed suicide the day before appearing in court, leaving a note that read "This world will never understand."

Ginni's story spread quickly and attracted the attention of the public and scientific community. Soon after, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) provided funding to form a team of psychologists and language experts to start helping Ginny recover, while also conducting scientific research on Ginny.

psychologist Dr. David Rigler, in the rehabilitation team, explained: "I feel that everyone she has come into contact with is attracted to her. She has a ability to communicate with people, and this ability is developing faster and faster, but in fact this ability exists from the beginning. She has a way to ask for help without saying anything, but somehow, through her eyes, people want to do something for her."

When I first arrived at UCLA, Ginny weighed only 53 pounds and walked in a strange way. She spits frequently and can't stretch her arms and legs. She was taciturn, incontinent, unable to chew, and initially seemed to recognize only her name and the word "sorry".

After evaluating Ginni's emotional and cognitive abilities, team members believed that Ginni was the most seriously damaged child. Her silence and language deficiency made it difficult for people to evaluate her intellectually, and her score on the test was only at the level of a 1-year-old child.

Soon Ginny made rapid progress in some specific areas, and she quickly learned how to use the toilet and dress. She made more developmental progress over the next few months, but was still poor in areas such as language. She loves exploring her new environment on a day trip outside the hospital.

Team members believe that Ginny has strong nonverbal communication skills and she often receives gifts from completely strangers who seem to understand the strong need of the little girl to explore the world around her.

Psychiatrist Jay Shurley, MD, evaluated Ginny after she was first discovered, noting that because cases like her were very rare, she quickly became the center of debate among researchers involved in her case. The debate about her research and treatment process quickly broke out. Ginny occasionally spends the night at her teacher, Jean Butler.

After a measles outbreak, Ginny was isolated at her teacher's home. Butler soon took protective measures and began to limit others' access to Ginny. Other members of the team believed Butler's goal was to become famous through this case, and once claimed Butler called himself the next Anne Sullivan (a teacher known for helping Helen Keller learn communication).

But in the end, Ginny left Butler's care and moved into the home of psychologist David Rigler, where she lived for four years. Despite some difficulties, Ginny has been doing pretty well during this period. She likes to listen to classical piano music and likes to draw, and she also finds that drawing is easier than other communication methods.

National Hosting (1975 - Now)

Due to the lack of new scientific discoveries, the National Institute of Mental Health withdrew its grant in 1974. Although Ginny can use words at this time, she does not know how to use grammar. She was unable to combine words in a meaningful way, which also supported the view of critical periods of language.

1975, Ginny returned to her biological mother. But her mother soon found that she was unable to do the difficult job, so Ginny was transferred to many foster care families and was further abused and neglected.

Ginni's situation continues to deteriorate. After staying in a foster home for a long time, she returned to the Children's Hospital. Unfortunately, the progress she made during her first hospitalization was severely damaged by the abuse she later suffered in foster care homes. Ginny dared not speak and retreated back to silence.

Ginni's biological mother then sued Los Angeles Children's Hospital and the research team, accusing them of conducting too many tests. Although the lawsuit was finally resolved, there were also great doubts about Ginny's treatment and care. Has the study affected the treatment of girls?

Today, Ginny is still under custody of California and lives in an adult foster care family in Southern California . Psychiatrist Jay Shurley visited her on her 27th and 29th birthdays and his description of Ginny was: being silent, depressed, and long-term hospitalized most of the time.

Ginnie and language development

Ginnie's case is so fascinating in part by psychologists and linguists because it provides a unique opportunity for language development research. There has always been fierce controversy over language development and acquired development. Genes and environment, which one plays a greater role in language development?

Innateists believe that language ability is innate, while empiricists believe that environmental variables play a key role.

Innate Noam Chomsky (Noam Chomsky) believes that learning alone cannot fully explain the acquisition of language. Instead, he proposed that children are born with language acquisition devices (LADs), a natural ability to understand the principles of language. Once exposed to language, this device allows children to learn language at an astonishing speed.

Linguist Eric Lenneberg believes that like many other human behaviors, the ability to learn language is also at a critical time. The critical period is a limited period of time when organisms react sensitively to external stimuli and are able to acquire certain skills.

According to Reinerberg, the critical period of language acquisition lasts until around the age of 12.He believes that after puberty begins, the brain's tissues are basically established and cannot learn and use language in a fully functional way.

Ginni's case provides researchers with a rare opportunity. If she is given a rich learning environment, can she overcome her deprived childhood and learn language even if she misses a critical period? If she can, it means that the critical period hypothesis of language development is wrong. If she can't, it means that Reinerberg's theory is correct.

Although Ginny scored only at the level of a 1-year-old in her initial assessment, she quickly learned more words. She started by learning a single word and finally started to combine two words like a child. Linguists began to feel that Ginny was fully capable of learning language.

After a year of treatment, she even began to occasionally connect the three words together. In the language development of normal children, this stage is followed by the language explosion period. Children will soon learn new words and start putting them together in novel ways.

However, this did not happen to Ginny. Her language skills remained stagnant at this stage, she was unable to apply grammatical rules and could not use language in meaningful ways. At this point, her progress has stabilized and her acquisition of new language has ceased.

Although Ginny was able to learn some languages ​​after adolescence, she was unable to use grammar, which provided evidence for the critical period hypothesis.

Of course, Ginny's situation is not that simple. Not only did she miss the critical period of learning the language, she also suffered horrible abuse. She spent most of her childhood malnourished and lacked cognitive stimulation.

Researchers also cannot be completely sure if Ginni has any pre-existing cognitive deficits. When she was a baby, a pediatrician diagnosed her with some type of intellectual retardation. Therefore, the researchers cannot determine whether Ginny has experienced cognitive deficits caused by years of abuse, or whether she is born with some degree of intellectual disability.

Ethics issues

Ginni's story has caused many ethical issues. If you want to do rigorous scientific research, you won’t care about Ginny’s preferences; if you just want to help Ginny, you won’t do a lot of scientific research. And in Ginny's case, everyone in the rehabilitation team plays the role of both therapist and researcher. Therefore, the Ginny case not only teaches us knowledge about human development, but also makes people more aware of the rewards and risks of "taboo experiments"!