What do feral children teach us about the development of IQ? (moved to Discussion)

[sevensages]

A feral child is a child who grew up isolated from any human contact for many years. Some feral children are isolated from human contact because they live alone in the wilderness. Other feral children grow up in houses, but they are isolated from any human contact because their parents lock them in a bedroom or a closet or a basement, and their parents never talk to them. When feral children enter human society, they remain intellectually stunted for life. Adults who were feral children never learn any human languages, and they never learn how to perform proper hygiene. And they never are able to hold a job and become a productive member of society. They usually either live in a group home for people with mental retardation or are cared for by their families.

Here are some links about feral children:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)

Psychologists have debated how much of IQ is determined by genetics and how much of IQ is determined by environment since the inception of IQ tests in World War 1. I've never seen any psychologist write about what feral children can teach us about how environment can influence IQ, but it seems to me that feral children can shed some light on the question of how much environment can influence IQ.


Most feral children become retarded adults. The only feral children that don't become retarded adults are feral children that were only isolated from human contact for a short time like a few months or a few years (not many years). There is no evidence that these feral children who become retarded adults have any congenital birth defects causing them to be retarded. So doesn't it follow from this that the retardation of most feral children must be caused somehow by being isolated from human contact throughout their childhoods? So doesn't this indicate that the normal human environment is somehow critical to developing IQ? I think that the retardation of adults who were feral children is a point in favor of psychologists who argue that the environment has a substantial effect on developing a person's IQ.

 

[.Scott]

The biggest problem with answering your questions is that you haven't been explicit enough.
It's an age-old question: What is more important: nature or nuture? The answer is 100% dependent on how you measure importance. What are your policy objectives. Or, if you are dealing with an individual, what is important to them.

I would also call your attention to your term "normal human environment". Certainly, whatever environment a child finds themselves in will be the one that they will attempt to adapt to. So, it's a form of adaptation.

I know of a case where a child (a distant relative) who was growing up from about age 2 and on with unrepressible multiple daily seizures and had lost his language skills. He had, by any casual observation, a profoundly low IQ and his interaction with people was not recognizably "social". For example, he never established eye contact. It was also his practice to break things.
On engaging with his mother at his home, I also noticed a few things that perhaps only a systems analysts would catch. Not only could he not ask for help verbally, but he seemed oblivious to the notion that other people could be of deliberate assistance - or perhaps it was more fun if they didn't cooperate. At one time when I was visiting, he was about 4 and he was allowed to roam the house (within limits), move chairs about (within limits), and generally do anything harmless. I was talking to his mother in the kitchen. As we continued our discussion, we took little notice of his apparently random activities. Finally, he did something that we could not ignore and his mother raced out of the room to prevent something from falling. From there, I can't remember the exact sequence of events, but the bottom line is that he had set up a series of distractions to keep his mother on the run while he moved a high chair onto the floor space immediately between where we had been standing and then climbed up the chair to reach our eye level. He was there by the time his mother had returned for the conversation.
In another case, he wanted to break a glass ash tray. His parents knew this and stopped him. It took him 8 months, but he finally arranged this same kind of positional manipulation to give himself the time to recover the ash tray, bring it to the top of the cellar stairs, and send it flying.

My point is simply that the tie between social skills and IQ depends hugely on the way that IQ is determined.

Certainly environment is important for adaptation. The term "formative years" is generally taken as ages birth to 8 - and suggests that some "forming" must occur before a dead line. I see in my kids and in the people that I have grown up with that skills learned before age 16 tend to set their paths for the rest of their lives.

But I expect their are limits. No matter the environment, what portion of the population could have develop into an Einstein?

 

[sevensages]

The biggest problem with answering your questions is that you haven't been explicit enough.
It's an age-old question: What is more important: nature or nuture? The answer is 100% dependent on how you measure importance. What are your policy objectives. Or, if you are dealing with an individual, what is important to them.

I would also call your attention to your term "normal human environment". Certainly, whatever environment a child finds themselves in will be the one that they will attempt to adapt to. So, it's a form of adaptation.

I know of a case where a child (a distant relative) who was growing up from about age 2 and on with unrepressible multiple daily seizures and had lost his language skills. He had, by any casual observation, a profoundly low IQ and his interaction with people was not recognizably "social". For example, he never established eye contact. It was also his practice to break things.
On engaging with his mother at his home, I also noticed a few things that perhaps only a systems analysts would catch. Not only could he not ask for help verbally, but he seemed oblivious to the notion that other people could be of deliberate assistance - or perhaps it was more fun if they didn't cooperate. At one time when I was visiting, he was about 4 and he was allowed to roam the house (within limits), move chairs about (within limits), and generally do anything harmless. I was talking to his mother in the kitchen. As we continued our discussion, we took little notice of his apparently random activities. Finally, he did something that we could not ignore and his mother raced out of the room to prevent something from falling. From there, I can't remember the exact sequence of events, but the bottom line is that he had set up a series of distractions to keep his mother on the run while he moved a high chair onto the floor space immediately between where we had been standing and then climbed up the chair to reach our eye level. He was there by the time his mother had returned for the conversation.
In another case, he wanted to break a glass ash tray. His parents knew this and stopped him. It took him 8 months, but he finally arranged this same kind of positional manipulation to give himself the time to recover the ash tray, bring it to the top of the cellar stairs, and send it flying.

My point is simply that the tie between social skills and IQ depends hugely on the way that IQ is determined.

Certainly environment is important for adaptation. The term "formative years" is generally taken as ages birth to 8 - and suggests that some "forming" must occur before a dead line. I see in my kids and in the people that I have grown up with that skills learned before age 16 tend to set their paths for the rest of their lives.

But I expect their are limits. No matter the environment, what portion of the population could have develop into an Einstein?

The normal human environment just means to live among other people who talk.

 

[sevensages]

So nobody thinks I have a point?

 

[.Scott]

So nobody thinks I have a point?

In general, looking at extremes (such as feral children) has the potential to demonstrate basic principles. But simply saying "this is another point for nuture vs. nature" is not a full notion. You need to say how you are thinking of applying that notion. Once you have done that, then we can work out whether you're really connecting any dots.
You have some corollary that you think is so obvious that you presume we know what it is. But we don't. So tell us.

 

[Yaroslav Granowski]

So nobody thinks I have a point?

What is more important for life, to eat or to drink? Both are necessary.
And so is in your extreme example of feral children.

And totally another question would be about harms of different degrees of malnutrition and degydration. And with IQ development things will be more complicated.

 

[Borek]

My point is simply that the tie between social skills and IQ depends hugely on the way that IQ is determined.

This.

There is plenty of hidden assumptions behind IQ tests, and using them blindly to assess people that don't come from our "standard" upbringing is a sure way of getting results that are either meaningless (tools used outside of their specification) or obvious (no skills in people that could not develop skills).

 

[Lnewqban]

... people with mental retardation...
...
Most feral children become retarded adults.

How could we define mental retardation?
Did Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Vincent van Gogh suffer from that condition regarding mathematics?

 

[RicoGerogi]

How important early social interaction is...without it, even healthy kids can end with serious, lasting delays.

 

[sevensages]

In general, looking at extremes (such as feral children) has the potential to demonstrate basic principles. But simply saying "this is another point for nuture vs. nature" is not a full notion. You need to say how you are thinking of applying that notion. Once you have done that, then we can work out whether you're really connecting any dots.
You have some corollary that you think is so obvious that you presume we know what it is. But we don't. So tell us.

The only significant thing that I did not explicitly spell out in the OP is that when these feral children are returned back to human society, people have tried hard to socialize these feral children to the norms of society such as learning how to speak and understand human language and how to have proper hygiene, and how to hold a job so they can support themselves financially, and these efforts always fail. I did not mention the heroic efforts made to help feral children in the OP.

Some people think that IQ is determined strictly by genetics. My argument is not a straw man. I think feral children show that IQ is not determined strictly by genetics.

 

[sevensages]

How important early social interaction is...without it, even healthy kids can end with serious, lasting delays.

Yes. Even physically healthy kids can end up with delays that last forever. I wrote the word physically because I don't think that the feral children are mentally healthy.

 

[Bandersnatch]

Some people think that IQ is determined strictly by genetics. My argument is not a straw man. I think feral children show that IQ is not determined strictly by genetics.

Can you point to some papers or textbooks that argue this?

 

[pinball1970]

No matter the environment, what portion of the population could have develop into an Einstein?

Einstein was a very late talker also?

Reading "The strangest man" a biography of Paul Dirac, his upbringing read like something from a Victorian Novel.
His father was very strict and insisted they spoke only French at the dinner table. IIRC The author suggested this strict treatment may have led to his minimal use of language as an adult.

Obviously both men became giants in the world of physics and today are considered special geniuses.

Einstein: His Life and Universe Walter Isaacson. 2007

The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius 2009 Graham Farmelo,

 

[Laroxe]

This is a good example of a basic misunderstanding of genetics and evolution, and perhaps the main reason that ideas like the nature - nurture debate have become unfashionable in many academic disciplines. Basically, we have to consider what life is or means, when we talk about life we are talking about an organism that interacts with its environment in all sorts of ways. Our genes in many ways provide us with the tools we use in these interactions, but they are tools that develop alongside our other changes, and they are remarkably flexible. What we are, at any point in our lives, is a result of our genes and the history of our development and gene expression. Genes don't just have one single function and are often capable of producing various protein products, their activity is often dependent on the organism's history of development of complex webs of genes and the activity of these is controlled by each genes interactions with the various things that control gene expression. These may be other genes, other physiological effects and a wide range of environmental factors, it's also true that much of this activity has to occur in a particular order for development to proceed, and it may depend on particular environmental stimuli. Perhaps the best example of this might be in the development of vision in cats, if a kitten isn't exposed to visual stimuli during a critical development period it never develops normal vision. This idea of critical periods in development may explain why feral children don't catch up in their development when the environment is normalised.

It's not really something that has been widely researched in humans, for all sorts of reasons but it does seem to make perfect sense that the environment in which a child develops is likely to have important long term effects on a wide range of abilities. The idea that humans are perhaps the most social mammal on the planet may mean that psychosocial stimuli may be particularly important in cognitive development. The important thing is that every change is likely to effect the way we respond to new stimuli, it's a very fluid and flexible process, but with real limitations.

I remember reading a story about a famous biologist being interviewed, about the nature-nurture debate. He was asked well how important are our genes in controlling our development and abilities, he immediately answered Oh! they're 100% responsible. So the interviewer said well what about the environment to which the biologist answered Oh! That's a 100% as well.

 

[.Scott]

Some people think that IQ is determined strictly by genetics. My argument is not a straw man. I think feral children show that IQ is not determined strictly by genetics.

In this case "some people" does not include those studying the matter.
Here is an article that discusses the inheritability of IQ.

Aside from checking the wiki article on IQ testing, I think you may be interested in the Wilson IQ Effect.
Here is the abstract to that Wilson Effect paper:

Ronald Wilson presented the first clear and compelling evidence that the heritability of IQ increases with age. We propose to call the phenomenon 'The Wilson Effect' and we document the effect diagrammatically with key twin and adoption studies, including twins reared apart, that have been carried out at various ages and in a large number of different settings. The results show that the heritability of IQ reaches an asymptote at about 0.80 at 18-20 years of age and continuing at that level well into adulthood. In the aggregate, the studies also confirm that shared environmental influence decreases across age, approximating about 0.10 at 18-20 years of age and continuing at that level into adulthood. These conclusions apply to the Westernized industrial democracies in which most of the studies have been carried out.

I have only taken an IQ test once - and only after the insistence of a very persistent friend. I was in my early twenties. There were clear attempts in that test to avoid obvious cultural biases. But it was equally obvious that they failed. The graphics problems required the test-taker to see features that would normally go unnoticed. And the word problems involved how the words are sometimes used, or what makes the letter composition atypical, and other such features. The test I took focused on 6 different types of reasoning. But it was certainly very reliant on the presumption that, over the decades, the test taker had had the time and opportunity to dwell on such matters - and that this self-teaching would be associated with reasoning skills.

My biggest issue with intelligence is that it is often taken as the key personality trait rather than just another personality trait. Would we really need millions of Einsteins?

 

[Hornbein]

In college I read of that 19th century wild child of Aveyron in the south of France. Apparently he was abandoned as small child yet survived to be captured at the age of twelve. To me this seems an outstanding accomplishment. Could I survive years in the south of France with no tools, no help, no nothing? I'd have to try it. It seems high IQ to me. I would expect an IQ test to be strongly biased against someone with very limited language skills. Not being able to understand the questions would be a huge disadvantage.

He was able to withstand the cold of winter without clothing. His teacher gave him numerous hot baths and eventually he became more sensitive.

Would we really need millions of Einsteins?

I'd be more than willing to give it a shot. I say he had very strong insight into politics. (Did you know he was offered the presidency of Israel? He saw trouble ahead and turned it down.) Give me a hundred million Einsteins and a place to stand and I could move the world.

Now a hundred million feral Einsteins without language, that could be a problem.

 

[sevensages]

In college I read of that 19th century wild child of Aveyron in the south of France. Apparently he was abandoned as small child yet survived to be captured at the age of twelve. To me this seems an outstanding accomplishment. Could I survive years in the south of France with no tools, no help, no nothing? I'd have to try it. It seems high IQ to me. I would expect an IQ test to be strongly biased against someone with very limited language skills. Not being able to understand the questions would be a huge disadvantage.

He was able to withstand the cold of winter without clothing. His teacher gave him numerous hot baths and eventually he became more sensitive.

The wild child of Aveyron remained retarded for the rest of his life. He is not a knock against my thesis at all.

I'd be more than willing to give it a shot. I say he had very strong insight into politics. (Did you know he was offered the presidency of Israel? He saw trouble ahead and turned it down.) Give me a hundred million Einsteins and a place to stand and I could move the world.

Now a hundred million feral Einsteins without language, that could be a problem.

My speculation is that if Albert Einstein was a feral child for many years, he would have remained a retard for the rest of his life just like the other feral children.

 

[sevensages]

This.

There is plenty of hidden assumptions behind IQ tests, and using them blindly to assess people that don't come from our "standard" upbringing is a sure way of getting results that are either meaningless (tools used outside of their specification) or obvious (no skills in people that could not develop skills).

My thesis does not rely on the scores of feral children on IQ tests. My thesis relies on the fact that it is self-evident that feral children stay retarded for life due to the behavior of adults in human society who were feral children. Adults who were feral children never learn human language, proper hygiene, or how to hold a job and support themselves financially.

 

[tech99]

I tend to think that the personality is formed when the brain is programmed for its task. In my estimation this begins before birth, as the foetus reacts to sounds and what is going on. My first child communicated with me from the moment of birth. Brain growth and the establishment of neural connections must respond to the tasks they are required to do - this is the idea of training. The personality is created very rapidly and it seems to me that by the age of three you have the person. Attempts by education to alter paths tend to be unsuccessful and the child will develop along roughly the same trajectory after age 3.

 

[Rive]

the environment has a substantial effect on developing a person's IQ.

A serious issue here is, that 'environment' has a definite and thorough effect on the scope of the applicable IQ-tests.

It's just a story (but with a grain of truth in it) that how many words Eskimo has for snow, but in this context it may be a good starting point to understand, that since any IQ test developed for snow-dealing people cannot even perceived in many languages => even Einstein would score far below average. But would that make him a retard?

So, in this IQ-related 'feral' case - you need a calibrated feral IQ test as a starting point.

I don't think anybody has that.

We do know about some effects the environment has on fitting IQ scores. That can be discussed (or, just looked up).

 

[Klystron]

I wrote this reply (quoted text) before reading the Op's citations that mention problematic "feral child" reports.

Forgive my lack of appropriate citations but be aware the literature concerning 'feral children' in child development is fraught with trickery and fabricated case histories.

I decided to post today to ask the OP to refrain from using archaic pejorative language such as "Retard" and "Retarded".

Appropriate terms include developmentally disabled for people with learning and language disabilities, and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) for certain cognitive impairments. This is not arguing for political correctness but reflects modern research and medical classifications since ~1950.

A major problem with unspecific terms like "retard" lies not only with the overt social insult but with broad misclassification that includes children suffering from nutrient deficiencies, brain injuries, untreated type 1 diabetes, profound deafness, cerebral palsy, various birth defects and many other disabilities as a definitive cohort. Appropriate terminology supports your ideas, obsolete language impedes communication. Thanks.

 

[Yaroslav Granowski]

This is not arguing for political correctness but

This is exactly what it is.

 

[berkeman]

This is exactly what it is.

Not in the context of his post. The terms he is preferring are scientifically more accurate, not more PC.

 

[Yaroslav Granowski]

Not in the context of his post. The terms he is preferring are scientifically more accurate, not more PC.

Not to start a PC flame, just to clarify:
He said that we shouldn't use term 'retard' because it is unspecific, but didn't give a relevant argument why we can't use its replacement intellectual disability in the context of the topic.

 

[berkeman]

He said that we shouldn't use term 'retard' because it is unspecific, but didn't give a relevant argument why we can't use its replacement intellectual disability in the context of the topic.

The term retard is traditionally pretty insulting in the English language, and indeed unspecific and non-scientific. The term intellectual disability is still a little ambiguous from a medical diagnosis (Dx) standpoint, but at least it loses the stigma of being a common insult in English.

 

[Klystron]

Not to start a PC flame, just to clarify:
He said that we shouldn't use term 'retard' because it is unspecific, but didn't give a relevant argument why we can't use its replacement intellectual disability in the context of the topic.

Incorrect on both points.

I did not demand not using 'retard'. I requested further research to replace a vague archaic expression loaded with unpleasant connotations with professsional terminlogy. PF has a stated mission to teach and inform. Would any member submit a paper or teach a class on developmental difficulties using non-specific terms with high potential for offending?

I certainly did not proscribe any specific replacement terms, merely listing a few expressions in common usage without exclusions. I used to write open lists with a few examples followed by et cetera (Term A, B, C, etc.) but found this practice tedious and vague, preferring to allow readers to complete a list on their own.

Certainly, 'intellectual disability' reads much better than 'retardation'. The esssential idea remains that 'retards' are humans with a range of disabling conditions. Oddly enough, the term intellectual, common in conversation, lacks scientific rigor and specificity as others have mentioned, though I personally find the expression benign.

This [political correctness (PC)] is exactly what it is.

PF posting rules disallow insults. Historically, 'retard' carries explicit insult. If one defines 'rules' as 'policy', then the above post may be correct but misleading. 'PC' implies some slavish adherence to a code imposed from above. Politeness and civility derive from an internal moral code.

 

[Yaroslav Granowski]

The term retard is traditionally pretty insulting in the English language.

Thanks for your patience. Judging by the reactions, I really might be missing some cultural thing here. Feels like trespassing some sacred grounds.
I kind of understand that N-word is insulting in the US because it was used by slave-owners to refer to slaves. But it's weird that African Americans use it to address their friends.
And the only reason I see how intellectual disability is less insulting than retardation is that the longer sentence is harder to pronounce and it will be less likely used as a swear word among children and thus collect unpleasant connotations.

'PC' implies some slavish adherence to a code imposed from above. Politeness and civility derive from an internal moral code.

Right on target! In many cases, for outsider, it looks exactly as such slavish adherence imposed by fear of cancel culture or some bullying from PC activists as depicted in "South Park" cartoon.

 

[pinball1970]

A feral child is a child who grew up isolated from any human contact for many years. Some feral children are isolated from human contact because they live alone in the wilderness. Other feral children grow up in houses, but they are isolated from any human contact because their parents lock them in a bedroom or a closet or a basement, and their parents never talk to them. When feral children enter human society, they remain intellectually stunted for life. Adults who were feral children never learn any human languages, and they never learn how to perform proper hygiene. And they never are able to hold a job and become a productive member of society. They usually either live in a group home for people with mental retardation or are cared for by their families.

Here are some links about feral children:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)

Psychologists have debated how much of IQ is determined by genetics and how much of IQ is determined by environment since the inception of IQ tests in World War 1. I've never seen any psychologist write about what feral children can teach us about how environment can influence IQ, but it seems to me that feral children can shed some light on the question of how much environment can influence IQ.


Most feral children become retarded adults. The only feral children that don't become retarded adults are feral children that were only isolated from human contact for a short time like a few months or a few years (not many years). There is no evidence that these feral children who become retarded adults have any congenital birth defects causing them to be retarded. So doesn't it follow from this that the retardation of most feral children must be caused somehow by being isolated from human contact throughout their childhoods? So doesn't this indicate that the normal human environment is somehow critical to developing IQ? I think that the retardation of adults who were feral children is a point in favor of psychologists who argue that the environment has a substantial effect on developing a person's IQ.

The Genie story is not an easy read.

 

[sevensages]

All anyone wants to talk about in this thread is the semantic issue of whether the word retard is a pejorative and whether or not IQ tests are a valid measure of intelligence. That is not really the question of this thread. I would like to create another thread and discuss this with using the term intellectually disabled instead of retard, and I would like to ask "What do feral children teach us about the development of intelligence" so people will focus on the core issue of this thread.

 

[.Scott]

When I was young, retarded was a normal term. It simply referred to someone who wasn't keeping up with their peers in school.
I think anyone who thinks they need to be careful about the term "retarded" should take a close look at their own values. Why is anything short an intellectual ideal considered "unspeakable". Why would anyone support such a value structure by hesitating to discuss variations in IQ or other intellectual skills?

We have a society that pumps our young ones through a scholastic environment bent on developing very specific intellectual skills.

Providing such an opportunity for youngsters is fine. Making it expected and obligatory is pathetic.
There was a time, only a few decades in our past, when school was mandatory only on paper. Enforcement was threatened (ie, "the Truancy Officer") but was very rare. Now, in many parts of the country, it is effectively enforced.

For many, this is a shaming experience. The only way to dispel the shame is to discuss it openly without judgement. Speaking in whispers, creating euphemisms, and avoiding the topic entirely doesn't help. And if you meet someone that you recognize as illiterate, that is not something that needs to be fixed - unless you already know they are game for that. Otherwise, they will manage as well as any of us with what they have.

At some point in adult development, once clear of the scholastic environment, I would hope that normal social interactions would become fully accepting of the variations. It is OK for an adult to be illiterate. It is OK for an adult to be absent-minded. It's OK to have friends or relatives with Alzheimer's - you get to meet them for the first time over and over again. When adults socialize, normal accommodations are made for the abnormally smart and the abnormally stupid. Personally, my memory for names and many other similar things is dismal, I am face-blind, and in my age, my hearing for tones above 3.5Khz is very impaired. It doesn't do me or anyone else any good to pretend otherwise.