[2] Brought to medical attention from their school children in the late 1980s, the case of KE family was taken up at the UCL Institute of Child Health in London in 1990.
Canadian linguist Myrna Gopnik suggested that the disorder was characterized primarily by grammatical deficiency, supporting the controversial notion of a "grammar gene".
Geneticists at the University of Oxford determined that the condition was indeed genetic, with complex physical and physiological effects, and in 1998, they identified the actual gene, eventually named FOXP2.
[3] Two family members, a boy and a girl, were featured in the National Geographic documentary film Human Ape.
The family children attended Elizabeth Augur's special educational needs unit at the Lionel Primary School in Brentford, West London.
Augur convinced the family to undergo medical examinations and approached geneticist Michael Baraitser at the Institute of Child Health.
Their first report in 1990 shows that 16 family members were affected by severe abnormality, characterised by difficulty to speak effectively, understand complex sentences, unable to learn sign language, and that the condition was genetically inherited (autosomal dominant).
In 1995 they found, contrary to Gopnik's hypothesis, from comparison of 13 affected and 8 control individuals that the genetic disorder was a complex impairment of not only linguistic ability, but also intellectual and anatomical features, thereby disproving the "grammar gene" notion.
[20] With Oxford geneticists Kate Watkins, Simon Fisher and Anthony Monaco, they identified the exact location of the gene on the long arm of chromosome 7 (7q31) in 1998.