The “Monster” Study
These days, any tests carried out on children are subject to strict ethical rules and guidelines. This wasn’t the case back in the 1930s, however. So, when Wendell Johnson, a speech pathologist at the University of Iowa, wanted to carry out research on young participants, his institution was happy to oblige. Along with Mary Tudor, a grad student Johnson was supervising, work began in 1939. Over the next few years, dozens of kids would be subject to speech-related tests, with the effects of the experiment lasting for decades.
The purpose of the research sounded noble enough: Johnson wanted to see how a child’s upbringing affects their speech. In particular, he was fascinated by stuttering and determined to see what made one child stutter, yet another speak fluently. Thankfully, a local orphanage was able to ‘supply’ Johnson and Tudor with 22 children for them to work with. All of the young participants spoke without a stutter when they arrived at the University of Iowa labs for the first time. They were then divided into two equal groups, and the experiment got underway.
Both groups were asked to speak for the researchers. How they were treated, however, was completely different. In the first group, all of the children received positive feedback. They were praised for their fluent speech and command of the English language. The second group received the opposite kind of treatment. They were ridiculed for their inability to speak like adults. Johnson and Tudor would listen carefully for any little mistakes, and above all for any signs of stuttering, and criticize the children harshly for them.
Johnson’s methods shocked his academic peers. Not that they would have been so surprised. As a young researcher at the University of Iowa, he gained a reputation for experimenting with shock tactics. For instance, as a postgraduate student himself, Johnson would work with his colleagues trying to cure his own stutter, even electrocuting himself to see if that made a difference. But still, inflicting deliberate cruelty on children was seen as a step too far. As such, the Iowan academics nicknamed Johnson’s 1939 research ‘The Monster Study’. And the name was just about the only thing of significance it gave us.
With the University of Iowa keen to distances itself from news of human experimentation being carried out by the Nazis in war-torn Europe, they hushed-up the Monster Study. None of the findings were ever published in any academic journal of note. Only Johnson’s own thesis remains. The effects were clear, however. Many of the children in the second group went on to develop serious stutters. Some even had serious speech problems for the rest of their lives. The university finally acknowledged the experiment in 2001, apologising to those involved. Then, in 2007, six of the original orphan kids were awarded almost $1 million in compensation for the psychological impact Johnson’s work had on them.
Interestingly, however, while the methods used for the Monster Study have widely been condemned as being cruel and simply indefensible, some have argued that Johnson may have been onto something. Certainly, Mary Tudor said before her death that she and her research partner might have made serious contributions to our understanding of speech and speech pathology had they been allowed to publish their work. Instead, the experiment is now shorthand for bad science and a complete lack of ethics.