Susan Curtiss is an American linguist and psycholinguist at UCLA best known for her landmark study of Genie, a severely language-deprived child, which provided critical evidence for the critical period hypothesis in language acquisition. Her research has shaped debates about the modularity of grammar, the innate basis of syntactic knowledge, and the learnability of natural language from primary linguistic data.
Authored the foundational case study 'Genie: A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern-Day Wild Child' (1977)
Advanced empirical support for the critical period hypothesis in language acquisition
Contributed formal arguments on the unlearnability of grammar from primary linguistic data (poverty of the stimulus)
Pioneered research on grammatical dissociations in clinical populations (Williams syndrome, SLI)
Demonstrated modularity of syntax from other cognitive faculties through acquisition pathology studies