Savant skills

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I would totally give up my freaky talent for numbers to be musically talented :D

well, probably not. I love numbers :D

All it takes is practice, and besides, there's a lot of math in music. In fact, there are genres of music dedicated to it (math rock).

Only trouble for me is my dyspraxia likes to get in the way a lot

General comment about living things. There are seldom all or nothing traits. Savant skills are no exception. I have to wonder why people want to discount something by calling it a splinter skill or something rather than a savant skill. Daniel Tammet learned Icelandic in six weeks. If another autism spectrumite took three months, it still would be a great thing and I would call it a savant skill. Yeah toward the bottom where someone learns a language in a year, it is always gonna be borderline.

I just don't see a good reason to be overly picky about what is savant and what is not. I call my particular skills savant skill because they are much better than average and DANG they just feel different than other things which I can do well enough.

I guess one question might be, "Why is it so important to label things as savant skills?" People can be very good at certain things, and have highly developed skills, without being savants. A "savant" skill generally refer to a specific high level of ability that would be normally unattainable for another person, no matter how much they worked at it. For instance, instant calculation. Someone may teach themselves techniques to quickly work out complex calculations, but they will probably never just "see" the answer the way a savant does, without effort (or with comparatively little effort). If you gave them some sort of calculation that defied their strategies, they would likely be stymied.

To pick another example, someone working very hard at learning a language could probably gain a decent level of proficiency in a year, but learning a difficult language to the degree Daniel did in such a short time goes way beyond gifted. He was truly conversational in the language. And there were no special instructional techniques involved- he just absorbed the language. I know one girl whom I consider to be a true genius, who has a particular gift for languages (among other things), and I doubt even she could accomplish that feat.

Being a savant goes beyond just giftedness, even high levels of giftedness. Savant skills are truly exceptional inborn talents.

Using the data on the Wikipedia site, I actually worked out an approximate percentage of people in the population who would be considered savants. Bear in mind that the original data might not be accurate, but here goes:

According to Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome

10% of autistics are savants
50% of savants are autistics

Now based on current estimates of autism (1/150), around 0.67 percent of the population is autistic. If 10% of autistics are savants, that means the population is made up of 0.067% autistic savants. If 50% of savants are autistics, that make for a total percentage of 1.34% savants. That's not actually very rare at all. That's one in 75. There are fewer people with IQs above the mid-130s than have savant skills apparently (the lower cut-off for "gifted" is often 130). I always thought it would be cool to be a savant, but actually I think I'd rather have the high IQ, because my IQ (top 0.09%) allows me to be very good at a wide range of verbal tasks.

Now, according to Wikipedia, of the 50% non-autistic savants, all have some other kind of brain condition (brain injury, brain disease, etc.). That excludes people without pathology who have savant skills, if there are any. Which means that actually an even higher percentage of the population may have savant skills, if you subscribe to a different definition of savant. Interesting. I never would have thought they were that common. Of course, a number of these savants may have extreme disabilities, and so you may not run into them too much in ordinary life (at least in a situation where they would have an opportunity to display their gift).

I wouldn't say that I really have any savant skills, but I do have a bit of a freaky intution about weird things. I have to work to understand math, but once I do understand I can skip lots of the calculation that my peers still need to do (convinced some people that I was way smarter then I really am because of this). When I've been doing a lot of math, I can look at someone else's work and have an intuitive sense of whether it's right or not - this dissappears when I don't do any complicated math for about a month though.

Once I understand a computer language, I am super fast at spotting bugs in code. I can just run the program in my head, and see where it breaks down. I also just intuitively design my code in a logical, modular fashion - I get confused seeing my peers my so many stupid mistakes.

I've also noticed that as I get more autistic-y and tired, my ability to draw gets more and more realistic. Not really a savant skill, but it's kind of wierd that I get better at something as I get stupider about everything else.

I was wondering about something. I don't know if I qualify as savant, but ever since I was little, I've always been writing stories. And I've always had a love for words. My Mom even said I always used big words as a kid. I was also a good artist, and could draw dogs well. I would form elaborate sentences, and always be in my head. I would also be really good at spelling and grammar. Aced my spelling tests 99 percent of the time. I've been writing all my life. I even used to read the dictionary for fun. I'm still writing to this day. But I never considered myself a savant. What qualifies as a savant skill anyway?

A savant is someone with an extraordinary skill that's like intuition. Some examples of savant skills are: musical ability - being able to play a song on the piano or other insturment by ear after hearing it just once and memory ability - a rote type memory vivid in details. A mathematical savant has an amazing way with numbers, might be able to solve complicated equations in their heads. When someone refers to someone else as a savant it just means they have exceptional ability that seems innate and unexplained.

OK. I know basically what you mean. But HOW does one be diagnosed as savant? What determines that?

I don't have any savant skills, but I have the "splinter skill" of memorizing vast amounts of information. I don't have any delusions that this is a particularly rare or useful skill, but it is fun when other people tell you that their favourite pasttime is watching you play Jeopardy!