Heather Stewart, Neuroscience for Kids Consultant. And when he came to the place where the wild things are they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws till Max said "BE STILL!
Feral children are those who have been abandoned or lost in the wilderness and have spent a significant amount of their formative years there. These child have lived without any direct human contact and often with the aid of wild animals who have adopted them into their groups.
Though there are many legends of feral children, only a few cases have been documented and verified see links below. Over the centuries, stories of feral children have intrigued many people - especially scientists and educators - for possible clues as to the effect of socialization on language and communication skills, learned aspects of human behavior and development and the true nature of humans.
Studies of feral children have led to new methods for teaching children with learning disabilities, and indirectly to the development of Braille and sign language.
Feral children are NOT the same as autistic children - both of these conditions are due to aberrations of the normal biological developmental process. Children with these conditions are usually fully socialized to the limits of their capabilities.
On the other hand, feral children may exhibit the usual range of biological developmental potential, but fail to develop normal human communication skills as a result of growing up in social isolation without proper models. Such skills are dependent upon continuous hearing, observation, mimicking and reinforcement to develop properly. Therefore, it is not surprising that feral children do not acquire these skills and rather that they may acquire those of their adoptive animal families during these critical socialization years see stories in links about children raised with dogs, apes, wolves.
This is due to the inherent plasticity of the nervous system in which, though many aspects of our sensory and motor systems are "hard-wired," others such as language and communication are more dependent on postnatal experience and the specific environment that infants are born into to finish development and acquire the specific skills and behaviors necessary to survive and compete in that environment.
Depending on the age at which they are removed from human contact and the age at which they are retrieved, feral children may not ever be able to develop normal communication patterns because of the window in early childhood when the nervous system is primed for acquiring language and communication skills. The films selected here all depict children who have been socially isolated from an early age. They make a fair attempt at the shock and revulsion with which these socially isolated individuals regard their "rescuers" and attempts to be incorporated into an unfamiliar culture.
Where the fictional films The Jungle Book and Greystoke miss the mark is that by all accounts, individuals rescued from such circumstances are never able to acquire the facility with language, social customs or even human understanding that their characters show Mowgli in Jungle Book , Tarzan in Greystoke.
Though virtually socially isolate, Nell's Nell limited and distorted acquisition of these skills may be due to shared isolation with her mother, whose stroke-induced speech order and extreme fear of outside contact shaped Nell's linguistic and social development. The Wild Child is based on a true story and has a more believable outcome i. Where the fictional accounts seem to outshine the nonfictional ONE, is in allowing the main characters their freedom in deciding where to live their lives - in the edenic wild settings in which they were accepted and grew up or in the complex, unaccepting, unforgiving often crueller and more barbarous culture into which they are thrust.
Perhaps not surprising, they all chose to stay in Eden. Themes that merit exploration in these films include those of human vs. Look at how contradictory concepts are merged, such as nobility, interspecies acceptance among wild animals and barbarity, nonacceptance of their own kind among certain humans. Questions to consider while viewing these films: At what age were the feral children separated from human contact?
During their social isolation, who or what did these children spend their formative years with? Did they develop "normal" human behaviors and language? If not, what or whom did they pattern their language and behavior after? How were these characters reintroduced to human contact? Were they happy to be rescued?
Was this an easy transition for them? Did they ever fit in totally? Did they ever wish to be back in their previous wild setting? What did they gain from human contact? What did they lose? Did THEY feel they were better off for regaining human contact? Do YOU feel they were better off? Explain your answers.
Does "wild" equate with "barbaric"? How about "civilized" with "noble"? Who were the barbaric characters and which side s wild or civilized were they on? Legendary and fictional feral children are often depicted as growing up with relatively normal human intelligence and skills and an innate sense of culture or civilization, coupled with a healthy dose of survival instincts. Their integration into human society is also made to seem relatively easy.
The implication is that because of their upbringing they represent humanity in a pure and uncorrupted state, similar to the noble savage. In reality, feral children lack the basic social skills that are normally learned in the process of enculturation. For example, they may be unable to learn to use a toilet, have trouble learning to walk upright, and display a complete lack of interest in the human activity around them.
They often seem mentally impaired and have almost insurmountable trouble learning human language. The impaired ability to learn language after having been isolated for so many years is often attributed to the existence of a critical period for language learning at an early age, and is taken as evidence in favor of the critical period hypothesis.
It is theorized that if language is not developed, at least to a degree, during this critical period, a child can never reach his or her full language potential.
The fact that feral children lack these abilities pinpoints the role of socialization in human development. Tragically, feral children are not just fictional. Several cases have been discovered in which caretakers brutally isolated their children and in doing so prevented normal development.
Doctors and therapists diagnosed Danielle with environmental autism, yet she was still adopted by Bernie and Diane Lierow. Danielle could not speak or respond to others nor eat solid food. Today, Danielle lives in Tennessee with her parents and has made remarkable progress.
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