Word: talk
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Stoppard is a rabbit breeder of words-button-tailed, twitchy-nosed, big-eared, bright-eyed and always on the hop. Onstage, words do lead to talk, too much talk, perhaps, in this play, but much of it is exhilaratingly Shavian. In the new guise of a didact, Stoppard comes out for a free press ("Information is light...
...twins arrived at the San Diego hospital in 1977 after proving too bright for schooling designed for the mentally retarded. Shy and uncommunicative when first tested at the language clinic, the two little girls would rush into the hallway to compare notes after each session. Their talk, Clinic Director Chris Hagen told TIME Correspondent James Willworth, sounded "as if a tape recorder were turned on fast forward with an occasional understandable word jumping...
...work. The parents did notice something they considered "childish gibberish." Playing in the corner, Gracie, the dominant twin, would hold up an object and seem to give it a name. Ginny would respond. High-speed dialogue followed. "They could say simple words," Tom Kennedy remembers, "mostly like Indians would talk in the movies...
...teachers discovered that she lacks what Jean Piaget defines as "object permanence," the developmental stage in which a normal child, at about age two, learns to retain images he or she does not see. But for Ginny, out of sight is out of mind. Says Catherine Pope: "The other talk still comes through. I suspect she and Gracie still do it behind closed doors." The twins now register IQ scores of 80 (up from 50) and have mastered simple reading and mathematical skills. The question of whether their remarkable private communication might hide a superior intelligence short-circuited by emotional...
...Gracie. Tom Kennedy speaks again. "You live in a society, you've got to speak the language," he says. "They don't want to be associated as dummies now." Ginny turns to her visitor after glancing conspiratorially at her parents. "O.K.," she says quickly, "I'11-talk-about-it-if-you ..." She holds a silencing finger to her mouth: "Shhhh!" She breaks into tinkling girlish laughter and goes back to scribbling in her magazine...