Wolf Children

As I was driving home from class I thought more about the significance of feral children to the Critical Period Hypothesis in first language acquisition. I was thinking about the problem backwards. Scientists who develop a hypothesis such as the CPH should not be interested in finding evidence which confirms the hypothesis, but evidence which could possibility falsify it. Because the discovery of feral children is rare, each new case provides an opportunity to test the CPH. It is because of the possibility of falsifying the CPH that every discovery of a feral child should concern anyone one who studies language acquisition, not because they will lead to confirmation of the CPH (confirmation is not the business of science) but because it is a new opportunity to test a hypothesis