The Experiment That Tried To Ruin The Speech Of Orphaned Children

Yes, you read that right. In 1939, a dark experiment carried out on 22 orphaned children produced the kind of story that makes you question humanity itself.

The Monster Study was an experiment conducted in 1939 at the University of Iowa under the supervision of speech pathologist Wendell Johnson, on 22 orphaned children. I have to admit that I find it darkly amusing that the student who carried out the work under Johnson’s supervision was named Mary Tudor. After all, the name Mary Tudor instantly brings Bloody Mary to mind.

The public would remain unaware of this experiment for years. It came to be known as “The Monster Study” because of how deeply unethical it was. When the details finally came to light decades later, the University of Iowa would apologize for having allowed such an experiment to take place.

What Was The Goal Of The Experiment?

The true purpose of the experiment was also kept hidden from everyone at the orphanage where the children lived. What Mary Tudor wanted to examine in her thesis was whether, through the right technique, it was possible to turn otherwise healthy children into children with speech disorders. This was, of course, completely at odds with medicine’s primum non nocere principle, meaning “first, do no harm.”

She also wanted to test the reverse. In other words, she wanted to see whether children who already had speech disorders could become fluent speakers through the right method.

At its core, the experiment was trying to answer a horrifying question: can speech disorder be psychologically induced in healthy children?

What Method Did Mary Tudor Use?

Tudor first created a group of 22 children, 10 of whom already had speech problems. These 10 children were then divided into two groups. The first group received positive speech therapy, which was expected to improve fluency, while the second group received negative speech therapy, which was expected to harm fluency.

The remaining 12 healthy children were also split into two groups. The same techniques were applied to them as well. Throughout the process, their speech abilities were evaluated on a five-point scale.

The experiment lasted for about five months, and the results were disturbing.

Among the children who already had speech disorders and were exposed to negative speech therapy, the condition of three became worse. Among the six healthy children who received negative speech therapy, serious deterioration in speech was observed.

That was enough to support Wendell Johnson’s hypothesis that speech problems could be reinforced, or even triggered, through destructive verbal conditioning.

The Most Tragic Part

The truly tragic part is that some of the children who had previously been healthy appeared to carry the effects of the experiment for the rest of their lives. When the story finally came to light, the victims were collectively awarded around one million dollars in compensation.

Yes, a laughably small amount.

That one-million-and-something figure was the total amount distributed to all the victims whose conditions had worsened. Then again, even one million dollars per person would still be a meaningless punishment compared to destroying someone’s mental or speech health for life.

Mary Tudor’s defense was no less chilling:

“I never thought it would happen like that.”

Why This Story Still Feels So Disturbing

Because this was not some medieval atrocity or an obscure case from a lawless era. This was a university-linked experiment, carried out in the twentieth century, on orphaned children who had no power, no protection, and no meaningful ability to resist.

That is what makes The Monster Study so unsettling. It was not just cruel. It was methodical. It was academic. It was deliberate.

It took children who were already vulnerable and treated them as disposable material for a theory.

The Bigger Point

We still do not fully understand every molecular or neural mechanism behind speech disorders. Protein pathways, genetics, and distributed brain functions all make these processes complex. A mutation associated with one bodily system can sometimes also contribute to something as specific as a speech disorder. When we look at the Brodmann areas of the brain, we also see that a single function is often spread across multiple regions rather than confined to one neat location.

That is exactly why psychology and neuroscience need to work together. Neuroscience may require heavier theoretical depth, but psychology can still offer crucial insight into cause-and-effect relationships and the way feedback mechanisms shape human behavior.

And in cases like this, that matters. Because The Monster Study was not just about speech. It was about how deeply the human mind can be harmed by authority, repetition, humiliation, and suggestion.

Sometimes the most terrifying experiments are not the ones that cut into the body, but the ones that quietly break the person inside it.