If A child was isolated from all human influence since birth, what behaviors would this child learn by itself?

Question

I dont know all the details about how it would be fed, etc., Just say it was done as an experimeriment, and these details were worked out. Would this child learn some sort of launguage to speak to itself, would it learn to lie, or always be truthfull, would it learn violence, or sadness, or anger?Would it learn sexuality, love, jealousy, materialism? What I'm asking, I guess, Is what types of behaviors are genetic, or contained within onesself, insticntual, and what types are learned from other humans.

Answer 1

None, if you start from infancy, because the child would be dead. Really, these sorts of experiments were all the rage in the late 1950s with Rhesus Monkeys, if you isolate *any* primate infant, monkey, ape or human, from *all contact* of any kind with any sort of "maternal object", it won't matter how much you feed, warm or clean the infant, he or she will die from want of contact with another living being. Primates in general require some form of warm contact in order to survive infancy.

So utter isolation from day one won't work. But, there have been cases in recorded history, concerning "feral humans", or children out in the wild raised by animals, that are instructive in this regard.

Basically, 90% or more of the things you bring up above are learned, social constructs. On a basic, genetic level, a human raised isolated from others like itself will have a habit of "learning" three things:

--he or she will attempt to talk....the chatter won't be understandable because there hasn't been any prior exposure to coherent speech to base anything on, but the drive is there, even a feral human will try to vocalize.

--unless malnutrition or the physical environment itself absolutely forbid it, the instinct will be there to walk upright at least *some* of the time. It takes either severe malnutrition or a genetic defect to force a human into an all-fours posture 24/7.

--And people will recognize their own kind....this has been the main way we've found the "feral Humans" we have...they see us and in some cases approach us.

Everything else, that goes above and beyond basic emotion or hungers (for food, sex), is a social construct. Look at chimpanzees as an example of this....they are highly social, political animals in their own right, in the wild, but....when humans enter the picture in any real way, everything changes. The humans *can* end up being more of an influence on chimpanzee behavior than their peers are....

And this sort of thing, in reverse, is what happens with feral humans who have never seen another "like them" before. The animals become their family and peers and mold and shape their behavior. So if the animals the feral human has been raised by are social, the feral human will adopt their social values, be they wolf or chimpanzee.

So yeah, I'd humbly say that in the absence of human parenting....not a whole lot of the social stuff we do is going to either stick (since it isn't there) or manifest by itself.

Just my plug nickel....thanks for your time. ^_^ Good question!

Answer 2

I vaguely remember a case where a couple chain up their daughter in the 1970's in the basement. From the lack of mental stimulation since birth, the girl was undergrown and mentally slow.Police learned of this, rescued the girl, she was supposed to be 16 and was the size of a 9 year old. Researchers find that certain 'switches' must be stimulated at certain ages or those are forever lost and a retardation occurs. Rehabilitation was difficult and took decades, from what I remember, she is still not fully functional.

There was also a case of parents in the 1980's who had adopted a gorilla baby and raised it along with their own baby. Instead of the ape growing more human like, the baby digressed and started acting more ape like. They had their baby taken away by DCFS for abuse.

Answer 3

This has actually been done. Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was curious about what language children would learn if they were not taught any. So he had infants nursed by women who were forbidden to speak to them. The infants did not learn any language intrinsically--they all died. It seems that human interaction is actually as much a requirement as food and oxygen. I'm sorry, I can't remember where I read this :( I believe it was in an interpersonal communication course I took in my sophomore year. If that's true, then the book was "Looking Out, Looking In" from ABLongman Press.

Answer 4

The animals have gotten the answer to this better than the humans. They never leave their young alone until they have learned all the basics for survival. Unless you are a turtle or snake or fish or something. Well even some fish look after their young. Humans have done a pretty poor job if you ask me. Go to any mall in the USA and see all the kids learning behavior on their own. No respect for anyone over 25 making their personal statements with blue hair and ear rings on their eyeballs and that is what our country is counting on as our future leaders. Wow we are in trouble.

Answer 5

It would be a monster. Human socialization starts before birth with the sound of moms voice and continues on indefinitely. To deny a human the earliest forms of socialization would create a living nightmare for whoever had to bear it. Humans being social animals are absolutely dependent on others for existence and would live a very short unhealthy life if deprived of human contact.

Answer 6

That is a question that psycologists have been asking for a couple hundred years now. Good luck finding any definitive answer.

Answer 7

i have always wondered that. one thing i know is that they would always stand on their toes and never go to flat footed because they wouldn't see anyone else walking flat footed and walking on toes is more natural. idk about materialism but most other feelings would be there.