Teaching Sarah to Read
Victor, the wild boy from France faced
many problems with language. The following problems were discovered by his then trainer Itard:
1. 1. He
would name objects that were presented but would not request them by using
their names.
2. 2. He
developed a gestural communication system that interfered with the language
training.
3. 3. He
associated a particular name with a particular object, rather than with a class
of objects.
(Refer to Carroll, David W. (1999), Processes of Language Acquisition, Psychology of language. California: Brook/ Cole Publisher. p. 311-312.)
He symbolized many thousands of deficient children
who do not spontaneously learn to speak. Quite by accident, in developing a
language for a chimpanzee named Sarah, David Premack introduced a system which
can be taught to profoundly deficient children.
