In 1970, a girl who became known as “Genie” was admitted to a children’s hospital in Los Angeles. She was thirteen years old and had spent most of her life tied to a chair in a small closed room. Her father was intolerant of any kind of noise and had beaten her whenever she made a sound as a child. There had been no radio or television, and Genie’s only other human contact was with her mother who was forbidden to spend more than a few minutes with the child to feed her. Genie had spent her whole life in a state of physical, sensory, social and emotional deprivation.

As might be expected, Genie was unable to use language when she was first brought into care. However, within a short period of time, she began to respond to the speech of others, to try to imitate sounds and to communicate. Her syntax remained very simple. The fact that she went on to develop some speaking ability and understand a fairly large number of English words provides some evidence against the notion that language cannot be acquired at all after the critical period. Yet her diminished capacity to develop grammatically complex speech does seem to support the idea that part of the left hemisphere of the brain is open to accept a language program during childhood and, if no program is provided, as in Genie’s case, then the facility is closed down.

In Genie’s case, tests demonstrated that she had no left hemisphere language facility. So, how was she able to learn any part of language, even in a limited way? Those same tests appeared to indicate the quite remarkable fact that Genie was using the right hemisphere of her brain for language functions. In dichotic listening tests, she showed a very strong left ear advantage for verbal as well as non-verbal signals. Such a finding, supported by other studies of right brain function, raises the possibility that our capacity for language is not limited to only one or two specific areas, but is based on more complex connections extending throughout the whole brain.

When Genie was beginning to use speech, it was noted that she went through some of the same early “stages” found in normal child language acquisition.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

قسم التطوير يقيم دورة عن أخلاقيات المهنة للمنتسبين الجدد

تتضمن زيارة المراقد المقدسة في كربلاء.. معهد القرآن الكريم النسوي ينظم سفرة دينية لطالباته

المجمع العلمي يحتفي بذكرى ولادة الإمامين الباقر والهادي (عليهما السلام)

قسم الشؤون الفكرية يطلق فعاليات الأسبوع الثالث من برنامج البذرة الصالحة

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

ثورة طبية.. الذكاء الاصطناعي يكشف سرطان الكلى في وقت قياسي

لتعزيز الطاقة والتغلب على التعب.. عليك بـ7 طرق بسيطة

لتحسين الهضم والتحكم في الشهية.. ما أفضل وقت لتناول التمر؟

خبراء يكشفون تأثير الاستحمام في الظلام على جودة النوم !

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

إزالة ثاني أكسيد الكربون من الغلاف الجوي.. ما دور المحيطات والبحار؟

نظائر الهيليوم مقياس لاكتشاف رواسب الذهب.. كيف ذلك؟

الصين تطلق أول ناقلة نفط خام ذكية في العالم تعمل بالميثانول

الزمن على المريخ أسرع من الأرض.. دراسة علمية تكشف الفوارق

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

What is a domain

The theory of domains

Consequences of adopting a frame-based model

Speech event frames

The COMMERCIAL EVENT frame

Frames in cognitive psychology

What is a semantic frame?

Frame semantics

The encyclopaedic view

Word meaning versus sentence meaning

Problems with the dictionary view

The dictionary view