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Genie Wild Child

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Submitted By thefakebest
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1. Genie gave researchers an opportunity to ethically study the effects of nature vs. nurture. She had not been taught to talk or do really anything. However the fact that the researchers are not sure if she was retarded at birth or not kind of makes the results questionable, they finally had a chance to see how language develops in a grown person who was passed the critical period. 2. One of the first things the researchers looked at was her brain waves. They found that she had an abnormally large amount of sleep spindles. This is characteristic of people who are retarded. They also did speech practices where they would repeat a statement to her until she would be able to repeat some part of it back to them. Like when they got her to say “doctor”. In order to make sure she was able to form special bonds with people, the researchers gave her a derogate parent who was with her during times a parent would normally be with a child. 3. They found that there was not really a way for the both of them to get their way entirely. If they wanted to preform good research on her, then some of Genie’s interests were going to put second. While if her interests were all a priority, they would not be able to fully study her. 4. When the researchers first started to teach Genie how to talk, things looked promising; so promising in fact, that they thought they were going to disprove the critical period theory. However, Genies progress soon started to dwindle. She was not able to express messages through sensible English sentences. The message she was trying to get out was clear, just not through words. So the case of Genie supports the theory that there is, in fact, a critical period for learning language. 5. They should continue testing her, without being moved around because she was getting proper care. I think she would eventually get smart enough to be on her own at least function on her own with minimal aid.

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