General question on autistic savants

Post Reply New Topic

Sounds like you've got Synesthesia
I've had it my whole life.

Splinter skills isn't really a savant gift. Many aspies have it but it's not a savant gift.

Splinter skills is actually considered a savant ability according to the definition. The three types being splinter skill, talented, and prodigious. My type is talented.

I didn't find out I was a "savant" until I reached adulthood, though throughout school I was always told by my language teachers (Spanish, Japanese, etc.) that I was the best student they had ever had in their entire career.

After my AS diagnosis, I found that I had a language gift, along with some other talents (mostly mental math and memory stuff).

The irony for me having a language gift is that I'm not at all social. I prefer to read than speak or listen. But I do make a living as a translator/language expert, which is a nice outcome all things considered.

Note: Daniel Tammet has written two books, the first more of a memoir, the second more of his views on the human mind in general and savant abilities. I found both quite interesting.

So I'm a savant in Benny & Joon? WOW

If I could find more facts about it, I would know them than just the ones I heard in the audio commentary.


I still wouldn't say I'm a savant.

Hi Spokane_Girl---Fiddlerpianist found some findings that stated that as many as 50% of us with autism could be savants in one of these three types. I think it must have something to do with our fine narrow focus on certain topics. We become so entranced by them that we tend to ignore other things around us as we absorb our interests. There needs to be more research here.

Benny and Joon---good film. I remember when that was first out.

And "Walk 500 Miles"---I coached the high school golf team when that song was hitting the charts---my team loved it---it was our theme song. I guess because it felt like we had walked 500 miles on the golf courses. I don't hear of the Pretenders anymore---have you?

your kid = awesome!

I play the piano, never been taught or anything....guess now I know how that came about. Bit devo it's cause of the AS.

You mean The Proclaimers? Yeah they are still around. In fact I saw them in 2008 in my neighborhood performing at the small theater and all their songs were boring. They didn't sing that 500 Mile song. I left before they were done with their performance. I thought I heard they broke up but I guess not or they got back together.

I have always known I must have a forum of savant due to my memory in certain things but didn't think I quite have it. I could relate to what rain Man was doing when it came to his interests and he says trivia stuff and all.

How do I know if I am a savant or not?

I actually meant that it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the number is, in fact, much higher than 10% given that:


and:

(from Michelle Dawson's blog)

A less conservative (and far from unreasonable) estimate might have an upper bound of 50%. So I will own up to the fact that the 50% number is mine, though this paper indicates that it is likely more than three times the amount commonly thought to be found.

I'm not considered an autistic savant. I've many AS trait (Aspie-self-DX) and I've a very high IQ. Many people in my life-time labeled me as gifted. I'm not good at art works or at music or at mental math. But I can simply learn easyier than any people I've met. Understanding ideas, systems and pattern is what make me "shine".

I'm probably like "Jarod the camaleon" from "The pretender" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0271732/

I don't have any specific talent and I think that my talent is actually that. I can see problems and solve it, and I never said "I don't understand it" at least when It was clearly explained.

For istance when I was 16 I was with a GF who did a "commerce school" (I was in a "scientific school") and she asked for an help with her studies. I've taken all her books of that year (around 15 books) and studied all her study plan in 2 days.

When I was around 14 I finally understood my problem with "teory of mind" and "body language", I went to a library and toke 20 books. In 1 week I had a complete teory of mind and I was able to "integrate" my self with society.

Nothing come to my mind in easy-way like for an NT but I'm able to study and mimic everything (everything not too specific, I'm unable to see someone using a piano and play a piano or painting or anything "pratical", but I've learned in less than 1 week how to make up music and writing notes).

I have never said "I can't understand it" and everything links in my brain. I can learn about animals behaviour and apply it to cellular automas, society and everything else. Everything in my brain is higly hierarchical and linked. For istance talking with my father (a surgeron) he asked how can I improve a particular tecnic for jointing arteria. I took his book, read it and connect it in my mind with physic, physiology, and math. I solved the problem in 1 week. If I study something in "art" I can apply it to any other science.

It took sometime to understand that this ability is higly peculiar of my brain and many people stops thinking after 1 or 2 steps of generalization, actually given enough time I can go on at infinitum and link everything in existance (and I really like the idea, baddly we have a finite life time and I can't gather all the data of the world).

Hi Fiddlerpianist---thank you for posting about the figures. After reading what you wrote there about the early research, I would be inclined to assume the percentage to be higher too. I guess we can safely say that the number is going to be in the range of 1 to 5 savants for every 10 autistics. Have you seen anything about the numbers for NTs and savantism? This could be interesting because I believe that our narrow focus is what contributes to savantism---or at least something that can contribute to it.

Very interesting, Nightsun. I would argue that what you describe about your thought process is a savant skill. We have a tendency to think of savantism in the extreme... the people that can listen to a piano concerto once and they play it back perfectly, for instance. The definition that glider puts forward uses a much broader definition of a savant. That definition seems to include any type of skill that's uncommon in the general population but much more common in the autistic population. I'm not a huge fan of the term savant; I'd rather use the term talented or gifted.

Absolute pitch is one of those types of skills that has always fascinated me. I've had it since I was... well, as long as I can remember. For awhile, I simply assumed that everyone else had it, too. (It still a bit hard to believe that most people cannot identify pitches out of context like this; it's just so obvious what they are to me!) I have no doubt that having absolute pitch helped me become the musician that I am today.

Apparently, though, absolute pitch can hinder good relative pitch development (which is crucial to becoming a good musician). Interestingly, Michelle Dawson (in the comments on the same blog entry I referenced earlier) notes that studies have been done that demonstrate that the non-autistic with absolute pitch is more often hindered then the autistic with absolute pitch. I've never found it to be a hindrance... maybe that's just one more reason for me to believe that I truly do have an autistic brain?

I have noticed that when people use the term "savant" conversationally they often mean "somebody who can do something that almost nobody else can do no matter how much they practice". That could be the 10% figure. It would cover things that are off-limits to nearly everybody, regardless of practice such as Daniel Tamment's ability to calculate pi in his head out to umpteen digits (he recited it for 5 hours straight in the documentary "Brainman"). But the more open definition of "skill that's uncommon in the general population but more common in the autistic population" makes the 50% figure possible. The ability to memorize every single book you've read is limited to probably just Kim Peek himself. But the ability to memorize large chunks of text, while uncommon, is not unique and can probably be acquired by many people who really put their minds to it. The Greek bards did it and so did any bard back in the day before writing was ubiquitous. But it comes more easily to hefty chunks of the autistic population.