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For years, psychologists and other scholars have been interested not only in children who develop normally, but in children who grow up in strange places and under unusual circumstances. Much about normal development can be learned by studying these children.
In 1800 three French hunters found a child about eleven or twelve years of age in the woods. The boy, who ran wildly about on all fours, was brought to Paris where he became known as the Wild Child of Aveyron. A young doctor, Jean Itard, tried to help the boy. Itard worked with Victor, as he called the boy, for several years.
Victor learned to understand many instructions and commands. He learned to keep himself clean, learned good manners, and even learned to sense injustice and take action against it. However, he was never able to fit in as an equal with young people his age. Although Victor learned to say a few words, he never learned to use speech for communicating. After five years, Itard found that Victor was making no new progress. There are many possible reasons for this. Perhaps the teaching began too late. Or maybe Victor's brain had been damaged in infancy, or even before birth, so that his progress would have been limited in any environment.
A young girl raised in India by wolves during her first eight years of life also made progress when cared for by humans. The girl, named Kamela, slept during the day and prowled about at night when brought to an orphanage in 1920. She howled like a wolf three times every night, and played more with the orphanage's animals than with the other children. Kamela too made slow progress but, like Victor, never really performed up to human expectations.
Children raised in isolation by humans have fared somewhat better. Every few years we read in the newspapers about a child raised in an attic or basement. Once discovered, these children usually begin developing very slowly. How much progress they make depends on the care they received before being discovered, the length of time spent in isolation, and the help they receive after discovery. The first two factors may be more important than the third. Poor nutrition is almost always present in these cases, as well as emotional neglect, making development after discovery extra hard. And the longer the child is isolated, the less chance there is for recovery.
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