The first thing that came to mind was the case study of Genie. Genie was a girl who was strapped to a toilet by her Father from when she was 14months old until she was 13. She never learned to speak, whenever her father fed her he only growled and barked at her. Genie's partially blind mother did nothing to stop the abuse. When officials found her, Psycholinguists and language accusitionists went wild for this "wild child." (at first anyways) No one had ever seen a case of a human so isolated from social interaction or a teenage that never heard a word in their life. "This child could be the answer to so many questions" researchers thought. Questions that are unethical for the researchers to find themselves.
Genie moved into the house of her new teacher, Marilyn Rigler a graduate student in human development. At first, whenever Genie would get angry she would engage in self-mutilating behaviors. Marilyn taught her how to turn that frustration outwards by stomping or slamming doors. And eventually genie was able to use language to an extent and exhibit her frustrations in words.
If this isn't an answer, or supporting evidence that ideas, thoughts and emotions are possible without words then I don't know what is. Genie obviously had ideas, thoughts, and emotions, but she didn't know language so she was unable to communicate and share them. The same is with animals, they have thoughts they just can't say them. They prove that they do through their actions.
Yet, on the other hand when brain activity was recorded they saw almost no activity. Her brain waves were extremely undeveloped and her brain was lopsided! She could easily do tasks that involved primarily the right side of the brain and it took a little while for her to learn things that involved both, but when it came to the left side it was impossible. There is something called a critical period, it's like a window of opportunity and different tasks have a different time frame at which they are best learned. If a human has not heard language by the age of four, that window is almost completely shut.
After a few years Genie had lost her funding, and she was swapped from foster home, to her mother, to foster home again. To learn more about Genie check out
http://www.feralchildren.com/en/showchild.php?ch=genie
Feral children never learn enough language to give the answers that scientists need! 200 years ago they found a boy they named "victor" in the woods, he had no ability to speak language. A psychologist took him in and tried to teach him language and raise him but he was so wild and wouldn't comply that the psychologist put him in a mental institution. He was there for the rest of his life.
Is it better to take these feral children in and try to teach them human culture, or just let them be?
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