#Concrete genie om nom nom series

Additionally, his mother gave him a feminine first name which made him the target of constant derision.

His father died of a lightning strike, and his mother ran a brothel while only infrequently seeing him. Genie's father mostly grew up in orphanages in the American Pacific Northwest. During her early childhood, Genie's mother sustained a severe head injury in an accident, giving her lingering neurological damage that caused degenerative vision problems in one eye. Her father worked in a factory as a flight mechanic during World War II and continued in aviation afterward, and her mother, who was around 20 years younger and from an Oklahoma farming family, had come to southern California as a teenager with family friends fleeing the Dust Bowl. Genie was the last, and also second surviving, of four children born to parents living in Arcadia, California. 6 Loss of funding and research interest.5.2 Research team testing and observations.3.2 Interest as a case study and grant funding.In particular, scientists have compared Genie to Victor of Aveyron, a 19th-century French child who was also the subject of a case study in delayed psychological development and late language acquisition. Psychologists and linguists continue to discuss her, and there is considerable academic and media interest in her development and the research team's methods. Her current whereabouts are uncertain, although she is believed to be living in the care of the state of California. Little is known about her circumstances since then. In early January 1978, Genie's mother abruptly forbade all scientific observations and testing of Genie. As a result, her physical and mental health severely deteriorated, and her newly acquired language and behavioral skills very rapidly regressed.

#Concrete genie om nom nom series

Authorities then moved her into the first of what would become a series of institutions for disabled adults, and the people running it cut her off from almost everyone she knew and subjected her to extreme physical and emotional abuse. Soon after turning 18, Genie returned to live with her mother, who decided after a few months that she could not adequately care for her. In June 1971, she left the hospital to live with her teacher from the hospital, but a month and a half later, authorities placed her with the family of the scientist heading the research team, with whom she lived for almost four years. Her subsequent living arrangements became the subject of rancorous debate. Īuthorities initially arranged for Genie's admission to the Children's Hospital Los Angeles, where a team of physicians and psychologists managed her care for several months. She also continued to learn and use new language skills throughout the time they tested her, but ultimately remained unable to fully acquire a first language. Within months, she developed exceptional nonverbal communication skills and gradually learned some basic social skills, but even by the end of their case study, she still exhibited many behavioral traits characteristic of an unsocialized person. Throughout the time scientists studied Genie, she made substantial advances in her overall mental and psychological development.

Upon determining that Genie had not yet learned language, linguists saw Genie as providing an opportunity to gain further insight into the processes controlling language acquisition skills and to test theories and hypotheses identifying critical periods during which humans learn to understand and use language. Psychologists, linguists, and other scientists initially focused a great deal of attention on Genie's case. Her abuse came to the attention of Los Angeles County child welfare authorities in November 1970, when she was 13 years and 7 months old, after which she became a ward of the state of California. The extent of her isolation prevented her from being exposed to any significant amount of speech, and as a result she did not acquire language during her childhood. During this period, he almost always strapped her into a child's toilet or bound her in a crib with her arms and legs immobilized, forbade anyone from interacting with her, provided her with almost no stimulation of any kind, and left her severely malnourished. When she was approximately 20 months old, her father began keeping her in a locked room.

Her circumstances are prominently recorded in the annals of linguistics and abnormal child psychology. Genie (born 1957) is the pseudonym of an American feral child who was a victim of severe abuse, neglect, and social isolation. Being the victim of severe child abuse and a research subject in language acquisition