Any test in which a young animal is deprived of its normal environment or sensory stimulation from birth. The name is drawn from the curious case of Caspar Hauser, a teenage German boy who had been kept locked up in a cellar by an insane parent for the first few years of his life. He had therefore reached physiological maturity without having had any contact with the outside world or people in it. When released, on the death of the parent, he was unable to speak or read and was totally incapable of social interaction. Caspar Hauser Experiments are designed to test the relative influence of the environment on the capacity of a creature to mature normally.
- Staff |
