What is the Monster Study?
In the year 1939, graduate student Mary Tudor from the University of Lowa conducted a stuttering experiment with the supervision of Dr Wendell Johnson. Johnson wanted to prove to the world with his hypothesis that stammering is a learned behaviour rather than the effect of psychological defect from birth. This study was conducted on 22 orphan children from Davenport. This experiment was later labelled as a monster study. This study got addressed as unethical studies in history.
The results from the experiment had come out from 22 orphan children who were between 5-15 years, in which ten children who were identified as stutterers and 12 children had no problem with them. The orphans were split up into two groups with stutters and non-stutterers. One of these groups were labelled with “normal speakers”, and the other was labelled with “stutterers”. Johnson’s team met with children every few weeks for five months in a consecutive manner. And the results were worse for the stutters. And above is described for What is the Monster Study.
Pros of the monster study
- After completing the monster study, many students learned how to pronounce words in a great manner. Normal students got the potential to work more easily with English communication.
- Mistakes while reading out words were decreased. After the monster study, those children in the normal category learn how to clarify their doubts and read out things properly.
- Those who have passed the test have learned the technique to go ahead in their life. After completion of primary education, they can start their wonderful journey in the secondary section.
- Children accepted their faults and overcame their fear of English. Since every kid gets frightened when anything new comes and overcoming fear and learning, that is great.
- Children react in a positive way when they are interrupted. Whenever they made any mistake at that exact moment, they were asked to pause or stop, and after rectifying the mistake, they were asked to continue.
Cons of the monster study
- Getting poor remarks for the pronunciation of wrong words. Normally, a child will make mistakes while reading or speaking out something for the first time, but the experimenting people haven’t cared for that.
- Heavily scolded for their mistakes. After reading each wrong word, they were asked why they spelt it wrongly, and many other questions were also asked.
- Children were suffering from disorders that impacted more after this experiment. Those children from the stutterer category were scolded even more and ordered to remain quiet until and unless they could talk perfectly.
- Got demotivated because of stupid comments and scolds. Children who were new to this field were asked to remain quiet until they asked to speak up.
- Speech delivering capacity of every child decreased after this experiment, and children had to restart everything from the beginning.
- Children were asked to impress with the reading quality and carefully complete it with some punch line, in which most students get fail, which resulted in depression for students only.
Impact of monster study
The monster study was conducted without the concern of the orphans. Staff members of the experiment didn’t ask for a single time and took them for the experiment. Those staff present over the orphanage didn’t have any idea what was going over there. This experiment made a worse impact on children. As per the experimental team, they said children would forget this after one year and recover soon.
But that didn’t happen. With that curse, one student left the orphanage. After that child lost her whole career, and no more information was available for them. This monster study became nationally infamous until 2001. The San Jose Mercury news published a series of articles regarding this story and commented on many things over it.
Some argued that this was a nonsense study and it should be banned from now onwards. As this came to national news, then every country got to know about this shameful study. Students started to learn the truth, which happened to them some years ago.
The estate of different stutterers was included in the exact lawsuit. The plaintiffs claimed this study had a long impact which left depression and a worse impact on children.
After many disputes, children won their case, and the University of Lowa paid over $1 million to the victims and asked them to forgive them as well.