On Language Development

From a writing prompt on our Honors Psychology Discussion Board:

I chose to read about Genie, the ‘wild child’, because I had previously seen the film ‘Mockingbird Don’t Sing’, which was based on her life and case history, from the point of view of her predominant worker, Dr. Susan Curtiss, a trained linguist. As I followed links around the Internet, going everywhere from linguistic case studies to film reviews; I began to wonder how environment affects language acquisition. Everything I read focused on the negative impact of a linguistically lacking environment, but I did not see anything that considered the theoretical positive effects of a linguistically rich environment.