Environment: The Impact of Isolation

For the first six years of her life, Isabelle lived in almost total seclusion in a darkened room. She had little contact with other people with the ex­ception of her mother, who could neither speak nor hear. Isabelle's mother's parents had been so deeply ashamed of Isabelle's illegitimate birth that they kept her hidden away from the world. Ohio authorities finally discovered the child in 1938 when Isabelle's mother escaped from her parents' home, taking her daughter with her.

When she was discovered, despite being more than 6 years old, Isabelle could not speak. Her only communications with her mother had been by simple gestures. Verbally, Isabelle could merely make various croaking sounds. Marie Mason (1942:299), a speech specialist who worked closely with the child, observed that Isa­belle. . . was apparently unaware of relationships of any kind. When presented with a ball, she held it in the palm of her hand, then reached out and stroked my face with it. Such behavior is comparable to that of a child of six months. She made no attempt to squeeze it, to throw it, or bounce it.

Isabelle had been largely deprived of the typi­cal interactions and socialization experiences of childhood. Since she had actually seen few peo­ple, she initially showed a strong fear of strangers and reacted almost like a wild animal when con­fronted with an unfamiliar person. As she be­came accustomed to seeing certain individuals, her reaction changed to one of extreme apathy. At first, it was believed that Isabelle was deaf, but she soon began to react to nearby sounds. On tests of maturity, she scored at the level of an in­fant rather than a 6-year-old.

Specialists developed a systematic training pro­gram to help Isabelle adapt to human relation­ships and socialization. After a few days of train­ing, she made her first attempt to verbalize. Although she started slowly, Isabelle quickly passed through six years of development. In a little over two months, she was speaking in com­plete sentences. Nine months later, she could identify both words and sentences. Before Isa­belle reached the age of 9, she was ready to attend school with other children. By her fourteenth year, she was in sixth grade, doing well in school, and was emotionally well-adjusted. Yet, without an opportunity to experience socialization in her first six years, Isabelle had been hardly human in the social sense (K. Davis, 1940, 1947:435-437).

Isabelle's experience is important because there are relatively few cases of children deliber­ately reared in isolation. Her inability to commu­nicate at the time of her discovery—despite her physical and cognitive potential to learn—and her remarkable progress over the next few years underscore the impact of socialization on human development.

Unfortunately, in other cases where children have been locked away or severely neglected, they have not fared so well as Isabelle. In many in­stances, the consequences of social isolation have proved to be much more damaging. For example, in 1970 a 13-year-old Californian named Genie was discovered in a room where she had been confined since the age of 20 months. During her years of isolation, no family member had spoken to her, nor could she hear anything other than swearing. Since there was no television or radio in her home, she had never listened to the sounds of normal human speech. It took extensive therapy to socialize Genie and develop her language abili­ties (Begley, 1984; Curtiss, 1977:274, 1981, 1982, 1985:108-109; Pines, 1981; see Figure 4-1).

The case studies of Isabelle and Genie docu­ment the adverse impact of extreme deprivation. Increasingly, researchers are emphasizing the importance of early socialization experiences for humans who grow up in more normal environ­ments. It is now recognized that it is not enough to care for an infant's physical needs; parents must also concern themselves with children's so­cial development. If children are discouraged from having friends, they will be deprived of so­cial interactions with peers that are critical in their emotional growth.

Studies of animals raised in isolation also sup­port the importance of socialization on develop­ment. Harry Harlow (1971), a researcher at the primate laboratory of the University of Wiscon­sin, conducted tests with rhesus monkeys that had been raised away from their mothers and away from contact with other monkeys. As was the case with Isabelle, the rhesus monkeys raised in isola­tion were found to be fearful and easily fright­ened. They did not mate, and the females who were artificially inseminated became abusive mothers. Apparently, isolation had had a damag­ing effect on the monkeys.

A creative aspect of Harlow's experimentation was his use of "artificial mothers." In one such experiment, Harlow presented monkeys raised in isolation with two substitute mothers—one cloth-covered replica and one covered with wire which had the ability to offer milk. Monkey after mon­key went to the wire mother for the life-giving milk, yet spent much more time clinging to the more mother like cloth model. In this study, artifi­cial mothers who provided a comforting physical sensation (conveyed by the terry cloth) were more highly valued than those that provided food. As a result, the infant monkeys developed greater so­cial attachments from their need for warmth, comfort, and intimacy than from their need for milk.

Harlow found that the ill effects of being raised in isolation were often irreversible. However, we need to be cautious about drawing parallels between animal and human behavior. Human par­ents are not covered with cloth (or fur); they use more behavioral means of showing affection for their offspring. Nonetheless, Harlow's research suggests that the harmful consequences of isola­tion can apply to other primates besides humans (R. Brown, 1965:39).