Genie (feral Child) - Hospital Stay

Hospital Stay

After Genie's rescue, the doctors at Children's Hospital began teaching her to speak and socialize. The day after her admission, James Kent was assigned to be Genie's therapist; he thought a steady presence in Genie's life would help her learn to form relationships, so he made it a point to accompany her on walks and to all of her appointments. When Kent first met with her he tried to discern her emotional and intellectual state, and found that she seemed afraid of a small puppet he had taken out. When she threw it on the floor Kent pretended to be concerned and said, "We have to get him back", and was startled when she repeated the word "back" and nervously laughed. As they played she repeated the word "back" several times, and when Kent said, "The puppet will fall" she repeated "fall". Playing with this and similar puppets quickly became her favorite activity, and during the early part of her stay was, apart from her tantrums, one of the few times doctors could see her express any emotion.

Within a few days of arriving at Children's Hospital Genie started learning to dress herself and began voluntarily using the toilet, although incontinence continued to be a problem for her even years later, tending to resurface when she felt under duress. After two weeks, Kent decided to take Genie to play in the yard outside the hospital's rehabilitation center, hoping to give her a sense of freedom. She quickly began growing and putting on weight, and although her walk remained very distinctive she steadily became more confident in her movements. Around this time, Kent and the other hospital staff began to see Genie as a potential case study, and David Rigler obtained a small grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to do some preliminary studies on her.

Genie quickly developed a sense of possession, hoarding objects to which she took a liking. Colorful plastic objects quickly became her favorite things to collect and play with; she did not seem to care whether they were toys or ordinary containers, although she especially sought out and collected beach pails. Doctors believed this was because while in captivity, she only had small plastic food containers and two plastic raincoats. Later during her stay, when Kent started taking her on trips outside the hospital, Genie's favorite places were stores with plastic toys. When she wanted to go shopping while they were out, she would point to buildings and ask "Store?" If someone in a toy store looked interesting to her or was holding something she liked, she would walk right up to and attach herself to who or what had caught her attention.

All of the doctors noticed how intensely she explored her surroundings, although she still seemed more intrigued by objects than other children. Jay Shurley noted that, whereas Genie had been apathetic and, "ghost-like" upon admission, she quickly began seeking new forms of sensory stimulation. Approximately a month and a half after her admission, doctors administered a Gesell Developmental Evaluation and found her to be at the level of a 1–3 year old. Doctors saw she enjoyed intentionally dropping or destroying small objects in the hospital's play area, and instead of discouraging her most of the hospital staff, especially Kent, tried using this to get her to outwardly express her anger. She also showed deep fascination with classical music played on the piano in front of her; Susan Curtiss said she acted like she was in a trance when she heard something she enjoyed, and that sometimes she looked as if she was hallucinating. If the song being played was anything other than classical music, she took it upon herself to change the sheet music to a piece she knew she liked. In captivity, she could regularly hear a neighboring child practicing the piano; as this was one of the very few sensations available to her at the time, researchers thought it may have been the origin of her interest. Genie quickly developed remarkable nonverbal communication skills and soon learned to imitate other people, make consistent eye contact, vocalize, and express herself through gestures.

Within two months of her rescue, Genie's demeanor had considerably changed. The scientists were concerned that she almost never interacted with other children—one psychiatrist who visited her in May 1971 said she seemed to view other children, "as though for her they were no different from the walls and furniture in the room"—but after a month she started becoming sociable with familiar adults, first with Kent and soon extending to other hospital staff. They noticed she was afraid of men who wore khaki pants, and saw she showed a particular affinity for men with beards; they attributed the latter to her father having been clean-shaven. Her preference was so marked that when Jay Shurley planned to visit in May 1971, Genie's special education teacher, Jean Butler, wrote him a letter in which she emphatically told him to keep his beard. By that January, her scores on the Leiter International Performance Scale tests had dramatically increased. Overall her mental age was found to be at the level of a typical 4 year 9 month old, but on individual components she showed a very high level of scatter. One morning a few months after admission to the hospital, when a minor earthquake struck Los Angeles, she ran frightened into the kitchen and rapidly verbalized to some of the cooks she had befriended; this was noted as the first time she had sought out comfort from another person and the first time she had so profusely verbalized.

After charges were dropped against Genie's mother, she began visiting the hospital twice a week. Kent said as Genie got better at forming relationships with hospital staff she grew more comfortable with her mother and began eagerly anticipating visits, and doctors saw Genie begin more openly expressing happiness when she knew her mother was coming. However, Genie still had a hard time with large crowds, even after months at the hospital; at her birthday party, she became so anxious at all the guests present that she had to go outside to calm down. After a few months, she started engaging in physical play with adults, eventually beginning to enjoy giving and receiving hugs. In April 1971 she began to direct some of her anger outwards, but she did not entirely stop harming herself. A month later, and approximately six months after admission to the hospital, she was given both another evaluation on the Leiter scale and measured on a Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale; these both put her mental age between a 5 and 8 year old. At the same time, child psychologist David Elkind evaluated Genie and reported she understood object permanence. Elkind also noticed that after Genie heard a dog she later attempted to imitate its barking, the first time she tried to reenact something after it happened; Elkind and the hospital psychologists saw both as major cognitive gains. In mid-June 1971, when Susan Curtiss had begun going on trips around town with Kent and Genie, she noticed Genie enjoyed going up to random peoples' front doors; Curtiss said Genie seemed to hope someone would notice her and invite her in.