the forbidden experiment

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Human Development

The Forbidden Experiment

As previously discussed, psychologists are interested in the role of nature and nurture on human development. It is almost impossible to remove the influence of either nature or nurture to study only the influence of the other. Case studies of feral children have provided one method for scientists to examine development free of the influence of human nurture. Some refer to this concept as “The Forbidden Experiment” since it would be wholly unethical to conduct an experiment in which children were purposely raised in isolation, away from human contact.

A feral child (also called a wild child) is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age and therefore has had little or no experience with human care, behavior, or language. Feral children may have experienced severe abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away, and others may have lived within a human household but locked away with limited interaction. There are several confirmed cases of such children and other speculative ones.  Historically, these cases have been somewhat difficult to prove and document, which is why Genie’s case has become so popular.

The following three cases are examples of feral children who spent part of their lives isolated from normal human society, which limits the influence of nurture on their early development. From these cases, we can see that some traits clearly develop, which we can attribute to nature. For example, these children’s eyesight develops properly and many of them are mobile in some way even without the social aspect of development. However, there are developments that are clearly hindered without the influence of human nurture. For example, language and social engagement. Examining these cases helps us better understand the role of nature and nurture. Note some of the differences between these cases and consider why these differences may exist.

Oxana was born in Ukraine in the 1980s. Due to the neglect of her caregivers while she was a toddler, Oxana sought comfort and shelter with a pack of wild dogs. Oxana continued living amongst the dogs through middle childhood until she was reported to the authorities and moved into a rehabilitation facility. Those who cared for Oxana reported that her grasp on language was limited and that her mannerisms resembled those of the dogs she was raised with.

In the 1990s, John was discovered living with a group of monkeys in the jungle. He was approximately 5 years old and is believed to have been living with the monkeys for about a year. John was taken into the care of a family and was enrolled in school. Though John has learned how to use spoken language, it is in a somewhat limited capacity.

Genie is, by far, the most popular case of a feral child. This is simply because, once Genie was discovered, she was studied intensely by scientists from various fields. Genie was discovered by child welfare authorities in 1970. She had been living in her family’s home but under isolated, neglectful, and abusive conditions. Genie could not use spoken language and had not developed typical social skills. She spent a number of years in hospitals and foster homes being rehabilitated and studied. The extensive testing conducted on Genie and the data gathered from her case have sparked discussions surrounding ethics.  Though much valuable information was gathered from this case, was it done so at the close of Genie’s well-being?

a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age

Child and Adolescent Development Copyright © 2023 by Krisztina Jakobsen and Paige Fischer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

We have emailed you a PDF version of the article you requested.

Can't find the email?

Please check your spam or junk folder

You can also add [email protected] to your safe senders list to ensure you never miss a message from us.

The "Forbidden Experiment" Is An Ethical Quagmire, But People Have Dabbled With It

Complete the form below and we will email you a PDF version

Cancel and go back

IFLScience needs the contact information you provide to us to contact you about our products and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time.

For information on how to unsubscribe, as well as our privacy practices and commitment to protecting your privacy, check out our Privacy Policy

Complete the form below to listen to the audio version of this article

Advertisement

Subscribe today for our  Weekly Newsletter  in your inbox!

Aside from the huge ethical concerns, there may be good reasons to steer clear of this "experiment."

Senior Journalist

Tom is a writer in London with a Master's degree in Journalism whose editorial work covers anything from health and the environment to technology and archaeology.

Book View full profile

Book Read IFLScience Editorial Policy

Laura Simmons

Editor and Staff Writer

Laura is an editor and staff writer at IFLScience. She obtained her Master's in Experimental Neuroscience from Imperial College London.

DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION

Nurses care for a baby at London's General Lying-In Hospital, one of the first maternity hospitals in the UK, in 1908.

Image credit: Wellcome Collection (Public Domain)

The "Forbidden Experiment" may have the potential to illuminate fundamental truths about human nature, but it’s so grossly immoral it would send any modern university's ethics committee into meltdown. Nevertheless, in historical periods that were less concerned with human dignity, some have dabbled with their own renditions of this deeply problematic endeavor.

There are a few versions of the Forbidden Experiment, but most involve raising a child while depriving them of key social interactions. In theory, this could help to unpick what parts of our humanity are influenced by genetics (nature) versus our environment (nurture).

In one of the most commonly discussed versions of the experiment, a child would be raised from birth in the total absence of speech, words, and written text. Deprived of language , the investigators could gain insights into biolinguistics and the development of language in the human mind. For instance, does the human brain have a hardwired understanding of the way language works through a set of rules, structures, and archetypal forms? Alternatively, do we freely learn languages without any innate grammar module ?

At least that's the premise. Most of the time, these kinds of ideas are kept as merely thought experiments, designed to probe complex concepts without any real intention of being demonstrated in the real world. 

However, somewhat unbelievably, there are historical accounts of people attempting to conduct this wildly unethical experiment (although the veracity of these stories is shaky).

According to Herodotus , an ancient Greek scholar known as "The Father of History,” the Egyptian pharaoh Psamtik I gave two newborns to a lone shepherd under the strict instruction to not utter a word to them. Two years later, the first word they spoke was supposedly “becos,” the word for “bread” in ancient Phrygian, an extinct language once used in Anatolia. This led Psamtik to believe that Phrygian was the mother tongue of all humanity.

An equally dubious account tells the story of the linguistic experiments carried out by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the 13th century CE. He supposedly gave several babies to be cared for by mute and deaf wet nurses with the hypothesis that they might innately know the Hebrew language, Greek, Latin, Arabic, or “the tongue of their parents.” Unfortunately, his experiment was fruitless because “children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments.”

Others have described the Forbidden Experiment as an instance of a child being raised by other animals, thereby depriving them of human social interaction. The term itself – “Forbidden Experiment” – is often attributed to the title of a book by Roger Shattuck about the "Wild Boy of Aveyron," a so-called “feral child” that was reported in southern France in the early 19th century. 

One scientist who toyed with this idea was American psychologist Winthrop Kellogg . Upon hearing about a case of Indian children “raised by wolves,” a case reported in the American Journal of Psychology in 1927, he became fascinated with “feral children” and their potential to teach us about ourselves.

He noted that any actively designed experiments would be both “illegal” and “immoral”, so he dreamt up another way to explore his ideas: he and his wife raised a chimp alongside his infant son to study the effects of the environment on behavior and development.

The chimp, Gua, would reportedly walk upright and respond to 20 vocal commands. It was even claimed she was “smarter” than than the kid, Donald, when they were both 12 months old. By 16 months old, though, Donald began forming words and Gua could not. Unsurprisingly, as the child grew older, he became increasingly capable, leaving his pseudo-sibling Gua behind in the dust. 

Although Kellogg is considered to be a "forerunner of contemporary animal-behavior science," the experiment with Gua and Donald didn’t unearth any invaluable evidence. Sure, chimpanzees are very intelligent , but they won’t be equal in cognitive ability to humans just because they wear clothes and eat at a dinner table. 

While many thinkers of the past have pondered about conducting their own Forbidden Experiment, perhaps there’s another reason they should be consigned to history, beyond the massive ethical concerns: they don’t really prove much at all. 

“The Forbidden Experiment and its inverse have largely failed. First the philosophers and then the scientists have left records of frustration,” Sandra Swart, Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Stellenbosch University, concludes in a chapter of the book The Evolution of Social Communication in Primates .

“The grand questions about human nature have been mainly unanswered and remain unanswerable by such experiments. The experimental subjects (both human and simian) have often died young, or been discarded, and others have been revealed as innocent (or witting) frauds, frequently exploited due to their own incapacity,” Swart adds.

"Mostly, they have acted as blank screens upon which people project their issues – as breathing inkblots in humanity’s Rorschach test," she concludes. 

ARTICLE POSTED IN

psychology,

chimpanzee,

philosophy,

feral children,

human behavior,

history of science

More Humans Stories

link to article

Engraved Rock Indicates Ancient Cave Was Used For Rituals 35,000 Years Ago

Unknown Written Language Found On Ancient Stone Tablet

7,000-Year-Old Bowstring And Arrows Found In "Batcave" Are Europe’s Oldest

Cannibal Paddington, Glowing Wood, And A New Human Species?

Harold Shipman: How Toxicology Results Convicted Dr Death

How Many People Descended From Genghis Khan?

ASA/CAA '05 Meeting, Vancouver, BC

The "forbidden experiment" in language development.

This, of course, would be highly unethical.

Language is a uniquely human ability, so we do not have appropriate animal models to study the effect of early deprivation. Given that the "forbidden experiment" cannot be done, how can we learn about sensitive periods for language development? One possibility is to examine several sources of converging but indirect evidence. One such source of evidence comes from the tragic cases of feral or isolated children. The most famous case may be that of Genie, the child who was kept isolated by her parents, locked in a room and tied to a potty chair most of the time until she was discovered by authorities at the age of thirteen. Genie was able to learn some words but she never came close to developing normal language and was able to handle only very simple grammatical constructions. However, the evidence in support of biologically determined sensitive periods from the cases of Genie and other children like her is not definitive because their difficulties may be due to other cognitive deficits or to deprivation of experiences other than language.

In this study we provide a new source of converging evidence that is relevant for the investigation of sensitive periods in language development. We studied the speech perception and language skills of children who were born profoundly deaf and whose hearing was partially restored with cochlear implants after a period of sound deprivation, ranging from six months to four years. The sound deprivation period extended from at least the time it took to determine that the children were indeed deaf to the point when the parents decided that they wanted to proceed with surgery. Thus, the examination of these children's speech and language skills represented an imperfect version of the forbidden experiment.

Results obtained using a standard test of language development were consistent with the existence of a sensitive period that starts within the first four years of life. Improvement in language skills was faster for children who received auditory input from a cochlear implant early in life than for those who received it later. In contrast, a simple test of speech perception showed that children's performance improved at about the same rate after implantation, regardless of whether they received cochlear implants in the first, second, third, or fourth years of life. A sensitive period for speech perception may well exist, but it may start later than age four.

Genie – The Feral Child

What do you think of when you hear the words, “feral child?” You might have come across a feral cat or feral dog at a shelter, but feral children are not anywhere near as common. They seem to only exist in stories, like The Jungle Book or Tarzan. You might be surprised to learn that not all feral children are raised in the wilderness by wolves or gorillas. Some modern cases of feral children, like the case of Genie, are still alive today. Genie’s story is one of mental health, forbidden experiments, and the failures of society to protect people who have been left behind.

Who Is Genie?

Genie was a child who was born healthy, but raised in an environment with severe neglect and abuse. Due to this, she was unable to learn how to speak and function in society. Genie is used as an example of feral child syndrome and has been studied in developmental psychology. 

Feral children may grow up in the wilderness, completely abandoned by their parents. They may also grow up in a home, like Genie did. Genie, born Susan Wiley, was born in April 1957 to parents Clark and Dorothy Wiley. Dorothy was 90% blind, and had migrated to California from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl. Clark was the son of a brother owner, who had been bounced around from foster home to foster home his whole life.

Genie was born at a healthy weight and height. She had a five-year-old brother with allegedly no developmental disabilities. In her infancy, Genie appeared fairly normal. She was, however, diagnosed with a congenital hip dislocation. The issue resulted in Genie wearing a splint through her infancy and delays in walking. At the time, Genie’s father Clark believed that his child had mental disabilities, along with physical. Many psychologists believe that Clark felt that he had to protect Genie, partially explaining his horrific behavior later in Genie’s life. Others believe that Clark was delusional, spurred by intense feelings of rage and grief after the death of Clark’s mother. At 20 months old, Genie’s family moved into Clark’s mother’s home, and Genie was shielded from the world for the next 12 years.

(Her childhood home is featured on this Reddit post .)

Severe Neglect and Abuse

This isolation is what made Genie a “feral child.” During the day, Clark strapped Genie to a child’s toilet with a diaper and DIY straightjacket. At night, Genie was confined to a crib, bound by wires.

She failed to develop language, partially because she never attended formal education, but also partially because her father would growl and bark at Genie like a dog. If Genie (or any member of the family) were to make any sort of noise or fuss, Clark would beat them with a plank. Although Genie’s mother claimed that Clark would feed Genie three square meals a day, these meals consisted of baby food. Clark would spoon-feed Genie, sometimes rubbing her face in the food.

Clark ran his household like a cult, and was extremely paranoid. He continued to threaten his wife, and only allowed his son to leave the house to go to school. When his son came back to the house, he had to identify himself in various ways to be let in. Clark would sit in the living room with his shotgun on his lap, sometimes falling asleep in front of the front door with said shotgun.

When Genie’s brother was 18, he ran away from home. That year, Genie and her mother were allowed out of the house after a huge fight with Clark. Genie’s mother brought Genie into what she thought was a state office to apply for disabilities. Her near-blindness led her to the state social services office. Upon seeing Genie, who was severely malnourished and had a strange “bunny walk” (with her hands poised at her chest like a bunny,) employees thought that the girl was 6 or 7 - she was almost 14. Genie was taken into protective care and her parents were arrested.

Clark committed suicide before he could go to court and face his crimes. All charges against Genie’s mother were dropped after she cited that the abuse she suffered from Clark prevented her from being able to care for Genie. Her case made national headlines, and because she was a minor, her true name was never used in stories. Instead of Susan Wiley, the “Wild Child” became known as “Genie.”

Studies on Language Acquisition

One distinct feature of feral children is that they never develop a first language. Genie could only understand a handful of words when she first examined at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Her ability to speak was limited further. Eerily, the two phrases linguists recorded her saying were “no more” and “stop it.”

Genie became infamous not only because her case was one of the most horrific incidents of child abuse in modern history, but also because her situation was known to psychologists as a “forbidden experiment.” At the time that Genie was rescued from her parents, Noam Chomsky’s theory of innateness was popular in the linguistic psychology world. Chomsky believed that humans have an innate ability to acquire language. His theory of universal grammar appeared to support the idea that language is wired into our brains. Think nature, rather than nurture.

This theory can be supported to a degree, but experts could not prove universal grammar or innate language acquisition through experiments with children. Isolating one child from language for the sake of a psychological study, much less enough children to prove the theory, is highly unethical. Genie provided researchers a unique chance to look at the way that language is developed or stunted due to nature or nurture. From the moment that Genie was rescued, she was examined. An entire team of researchers visited her for years, sometimes on a daily basis. They monitored her brain activity, observing that she had an estimated mental age of a 5- to 8-year-old. Her linguistic development was that of a 1- or 2-year-old. She exhibited bizarre behaviors, some that could be explained by her childhood and others that appeared to have no explanation. Many questions, including that of whether she really had a mental disability like her father suggested, have gone unanswered.

This is partially due to the custody battles and ethical questions that went on throughout Genie’s later teenage years. The first “foster home” that Genie had was the home of her special education teacher, Jean Butler. Butler butted heads with the scientists who were observing Genie throughout her teenage years. Some questioned Butler’s intentions, even recalling Butler saying that Genie could make Butler “the next Anne Sullivan.” (Anne Sullivan is known for being Helen Keller’s teacher. Their story has been told in countless movies.)

David Rigler, the chief psychologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, took custody of her next. He observed her behavior and worked with her for many years. During this time, she was able to learn some sign language and communicate through drawings. But her foster care with David Rigler ended at the age of 18. Throughout her teens, Genie had been in contact with her mother. At 18, she moved back in with her mother. Genie’s father was dead, but living with her mother was not the happy ending that anyone would have hoped for. Within a year, Genie’s mother sued many of the researchers involved in Genie’s case. She claimed that the researchers had crossed boundaries, breached confidentiality agreements, and overworked Genie. The next year, her mother forbade any of the research team from interacting with or studying Genie. But she also relinquished care of Genie, leaving her to be bounced around from foster home to foster home. When the researchers did try to reach out or find Genie, they were often disappointed to hear that she was not making the progress that she had been making as a teenager.

Where Is Genie Now?

Genie is only in her 60s now. She remains a ward of the state, and has not been in direct contact with the researchers that studied and took care of her after her rescue. Investigators who looked into her well-being reported back that she was happy, and although she didn’t use much verbal communication, she did take to sign language.

Still Many Questions to Be Answered

When Genie was rescued in the 1970s, researchers jumped at the opportunity to work with a “forbidden experiment.” Their passion for the research, and their eventual attachment and care for Genie, ultimately ended in unfinished work and estrangement from Genie. To this day, one researcher has repeatedly tried to make contact with her. Many researchers were drawn to Genie’s charisma, despite her being nonverbal and developmentally delayed due to severe childhood trauma.

What does Genie’s case say about innate language acquisition? It depends on who you ask. Some say that her case is evidence for innate language acquisitions . Others argue that the case supports the critical-period hypothesis, which argues that we can “tap into” our innate ability to acquire language, but only during a specific period of development.

Nature vs. Nurture

What about nature vs. nurture ? The jury is out on this one, too. Although the cruelty and trauma endured by Genie undoubtedly slowed her development, other research argues that her developmental disabilities were also due to her genetic makeup. If she did have mental and developmental disabilities, like her father believed as an infant, the impact of his cruelty would be a less prominent factor in her delays.

Genie is far from the only case of recent feral children, but is one of the most infamous. Her case also shows that issues of ethics and great debates in psychology are more blurry than they appear on paper.

Related posts:

• G. Stanley Hall Biography - Contributions To Psychology
• 47+ Social Problem Examples (Issues In Society)
• Beth Thomas - Child Of Rage
• Trust vs Mistrust (Psychosocial Stage 1 Examples)
• 37+ Instructional Strategies (Examples + Quizzes)

Reference this article:

About The Author

Free Personality Test

Free Memory Test

Free IQ Test

PracticalPie.com is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Follow Us On:

Youtube Facebook Instagram X/Twitter

Psychology Resources

Developmental

Personality

Relationships

Psychologists

Serial Killers

Psychology Tests

Personality Quiz

Memory Test

Depression test

Type A/B Personality Test

© PracticalPsychology. All rights reserved

Privacy Policy | Terms of Use