3:59pm June 19, 2014

“

A few years ago, I was at a conference on language and evolution when an audience member questioned a prominent child language researcher’s thesis by raising a counterexample: One aspect of the development of children with Williams syndrome didn’t quite fit the researcher’s theory. The prominent child language researcher quickly retorted, “Oh, I’ve seen children with Williams syndrome. They don’t count. They’re not even human. They must belong to some other species entirely.”

With the wave of a hand, an entire group of people was erased from the human race. Without a contesting word, members of the human species were sacrificed — but a theory was saved. And what was the distinctly nonhuman behavior demonstrated by some children with William syndrome? It was their ability to develop a prodigious vocabulary, prior to developing the ability to extend an index finger to point.

Admittedly, this psychological scientist’s dehumanizing pronouncement occurred during a relatively free-flowing discussion at a relatively small, invitation-only conference. The outrageous comment wasn’t even illuminated on a PowerPoint slide. But similar pronouncements have been typeset on the pages of other psychological scientists’ bestselling books and bound into our field’s most prestigious scholarly journals.

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