In 1970, a wild child was found in California: a girl of 13 who had been isolated in a small room and had not been spoken to by her parents since infancy. “Genie,” as she was later dubbed to protect her privacy by the psycholinguists who tested her, could not stand erect. At the time, she was unable to speak: she could only whimper. The case came to light when Genie’s 50-year-old mother ran away from her 70-year-old husband after a violent quarrel and took the child along. The mother was partially blind and applied for public assistance. Genie was sent to the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital for tests. 

   The discovery of Genie aroused intense curiosity among psychologists, linguists, neurologists, and others who study brain development. They were eager to know what Genie’s mental level was at the time she was found and whether she would be capable of developing her faculties. “It’s a terribly important case,” says Harlan Lane, a psycholinguist at Northeastern University who wrote The Wild Boy of Aveyron. “Since our morality doesn’t allow us to conduct deprivation experiments with human beings, these unfortunate people are all we have to go on.”