Week 2 - Victor of Aveyron, and the Limitations of Feral Analysis

One of the very first documented cases of feral children, if not the first, is the case of Victor of Aveyron, a child found in the wild of France in 1799. He was discovered at approximately age 12; he had no ability to speak, and elicited animal-like behaviors, such as biting and clawing. He was taken into the house of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, a medical consultant to the National School of the Deaf, who took a great interest in Victor, and sought to teach him to speak and behave like a human being.

Itard performed many experiments and exercises in order to train Victor and assess his mental capacities. He trained Victor to eat with silverware, rather than with his hands. He would play musical instruments to Victor, such as a drum or a bell, and Victor eventually learned to play them back to Itard. Victor began to understand some words, and even learned to write a few words. Victor essentially learned to behave in a socially acceptable manner, but Itard failed in one aspect: Victor never learned to speak.

A comparison of Victor to other feral children shows the difficulty and limitations of studying feral development. For example, Genie, perhaps the most well-known feral child, developed differently than Victor. Genie was locked in her room and strapped to a potty chair for 13 years; she received little to no sensory input, and was never spoken to by her parents. However, after living with a team of scientists including Susan Curtiss for a few years, Genie learned to verbally speak. While she was not completely proficient at language, she did develop the ability, which Victor never did. Additionally, Itard hypothesized that having some social connection during development, even one without language, could greatly influence the child. This may be why Amala and Kamala learned to speak, as they grew up in contact with each other. For more comparisons, see Yvan Lebran's paper on Victor and other feral child cases.

This shows the complicated and problematic side of studying feral children. How is it that Genie, who was raised in captivity for 13 years, was able to learn basic language and verbal communication, yet Victor, raised in the wild for 12 years, was unable to speak for his entire life? There are so many possible factors involved that it is impossible to know; it could be that there is a significant difference between being raised in the wild and being raised in a dark room. Or, Victor may have actually been mentally retarded or autistic, whereas Genie was simply language deprived. As Victor's situation occurred over 200 years ago, there is now no way to ascertain the answer.

One of the most severe limitations of studying feral development is the fact that every case is a case study. There is no "standard" feral child; each and every feral child was raised in a different environment, with different genes, differing amounts of social interaction, and for different amounts of time. Even if two children were raised in the same environment, their differing genes and temperaments would contribute to their development. Therefore, there is no way we can determine causation in any of these cases.

In order to do so, we would need to set up an experiment, perhaps comparing feral children and autistic children. However, there are not enough feral children in the world to get an appropriate population size, and it is immoral and illegal to raise children in feral conditions just for an experiment. So, while these case studies do give us some insight on feral development, in truth it gives us more insight on the individual.

Next Week: Brain Development.

Ryan

References

Lebrun, Y. (1980). Victor of Aveyron: A reappraisal in light of more recent cases of feral speech. Language Sciences, 2(1), 32-43.

Week 1 - Feral Development, or Autism?

One of the most prevalent debates concerning the subject of feral development is whether these so-called "feral children" are developmentally scarred due to their environment, or they are simply autistic to begin with. This has proven to be a difficult question to answer, as studies on feral children and studies on autistic children have often yielded similar results in behavior. Additionally, many studies on feral children were done many years ago (Victor, for example), and thus it is nearly impossible to determine whether or not these children were autistic.

Perhaps the strongest supporter of the idea that feral children are autistic children was Bruno Bettelheim, a psychologist of the 1950s era famous for his studies with autistic children. In his essay Feral Children and Autistic Children (Bettelheim, 1990), Bettelheim compares a study performed by Reverend J.A.L. Singh on two "wolf girls", Amala and Kamala (Singh, 1940), who were supposedly raised by wolves, to his own studies performed on autistic children. Many of the comparisons he makes in this essay do seem to equate feral and autistic children.

In the essay, Bettelheim states that Amala and Kamala, as well as his autistic children, showed aloofness and shyness in the presence of another individual. Additionally, two of the autistic children began to speak their first words after about a year of care; this was the same period of time it took for Kamala to begin speaking. Kamala would often crouch in the corner in the room for hours, seemingly lost in thought; Bettelheim's autistic children often performed similar behaviors. The two groups were even similar in their eating habits, in that both were known to eat like dogs from a plate. Finally, both the feral children and the autistic children seemed unable to laugh, a characteristic that can only be described as inhuman.

While Bettelheim's comparisons do seem convincing, there are still reasons to believe that feral children do exist. One major reason is that Bruno Bettelheim's work in itself is flawed. After his death in 1990, it was discovered that many of Bettelheim's patients were misdiagnosed; in fact, it is possible that he abused children under his care. He may have even completely invented his supposed credentials. Therefore, it is possible that Bettelheim's "work" on patients with autism was invented as well, a conclusion that would severely impair his stance on feral and autistic children.

Yet even if Bettelheim's work was completely reliable and valid, there is still reason enough to believe that feral development is possible. This is exemplified by a case study performed by Lenore C. Terr, a psychiatrist specializing in children with PTSD, on a young girl name Cammie Brooks (Terr, 2003). Cammie was discovered at one year of age; she had been living with her father, who bit, shook, physically abused, and growled at Cammie, and had killed her 25 day old sister. Upon arriving at her foster home, she growled, bit, shook, and even sniffed at sexual organs. She was diagnosed as mentally retarded, and placed in the care of Lenore Terr.

The importance of this example is that Cammie is essentially a feral child; she developed in an abusive environment for an entire year, and exhibits many behaviors characteristic of feral children. Yet through many years of psychotherapy, Cammie learned to speak, interact, and stop shaking. In fact, by her 11th birthday, she was taken into her school's "GATE" program for gifted students, and was reading Harry Potter for fun. This recovery is uncharacteristic, in fact impossible, for an autistic child to accomplish.

There are, of course, some possible flaws in this reasoning as well. Cammie developed in her abusive environment for only a year, whereas Kamala was found at eight years old. Kamala may have missed many critical periods for learning and development, whereas Cammie may have still had time to recover. Additionally, Cammie was cared for by an experienced psychotherapist, while Kamala was not. Yet the fact still remains that if Cammie had been born autistic, there would have been very little that could have been done to restore her from this state.

So, perhaps there are cases in which autism is confused for feral development; perhaps some feral children are, in fact, autistic. Or, perhaps feral children exhibit very similar symptoms to autism. While these points may be true, it does not mean that we can automatically assume that all feral children are simply autistic.

Next week: Victor, the Wild Child of Aveyron.

Ryan

References

Bettelheim B (1990), Feral children and autistic children. In Freud's Vienna and Other Essays. New York: Knopf

Terr L (2003), "Wild Child": How Three Principles of Healing Organized 12 Years of Psychotherapy. J Am Acad Child Psychiatry 42:12 1401-1409

Introductory First Post

Welcome to my blog.

My name is Ryan Hubbard. I'm a student at University of California, Davis majoring in psychology and minoring in neurology. I work as an intern at the M.I.N.D. Institute; I trace brain structures for volume measurements.

The purpose of this blog (in the beginning, in any case) is for a class I'm taking - Developmental Psychology, to be exact. As a research project, I will be examining and analyzing the effects of abusive and feral environments on the development of children. Feral development essentially means that the child is left to develop in the wild, in the company of animals, or without any human interaction. For anyone who wants more general information on feral children, the wikipedia article is useful.

My mission is to find relevant essays and published works on this subject, analyze them, and transfer their information to this blog. I will additionally compare/criticize these works (peer review is necessary in the world of psychology). I will update this blog every week with new information on the subject of feral development, including new essays, links, or analysis that I have accomplished.

However, a blog is a wonderful thing, and after this project has reached its completion (approximately 10 weeks), I will attempt to continue posting weekly blogs on the subject of psychology, neurology, and other interesting subjects. Not only does this allow me to transmit information to the world, it also allows me to collect my thoughts and stay active in the psychology network.

In any case, expect my first entry on the subject of feral children very soon (probably tomorrow).

Ryan