Research study on savantism in ASD

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No, I looked at printed material, but didn't know how to start on the words. I started school as probably the youngest in the class, and was only a mediocre reader until one day, reading aloud in class, I stumbled over "can," trying to pronounce it with a soft "c" sound instead of a "k." Chagrined, I practiced a bit on my own, and managed to not attract any more attention. Class sizes were in the low 30s then, and there were no TAs or special ed. I learned to daydream all day, but if my name got tagged on to the end of a question, I could recall it to consciousness and answer. I didn't have to do it often.

I hazard a guess that our trajectories may be more different than similar, so it is very interesting to read about your early years. Though on the hand I think some similarities will also emerge, if people contribute to this thread over time.

As far as I know, there has never been any research that elucidated these factors beyond the conventional cliches attached to savantism - and the central focus tends not to be on savants as individuals, but savantism as a phenomenon. The savants were often depersonalised and objectified in those accounts.

I've never seen a peer group discussion like this before, where savants can talk with, to and about savantism within a peer group setting, where we can both contribute and learn.

While I do not classify myself as having full savant skills, I do possess special skills that are far above what I should normally have. I guess my earliest "special skill" that I discovered I had would have been my reading ability in grade school. I was reading high school level books by 3rd grade and was understanding them better than the target audience. By 5th grade, I tutored high school students in science topics if that says anything. But, at the same time, I absolutely hated English lessons and was a horrible at spelling. I got better at English over the years, but it is still my weakest subject.

I also developed a sixth sense of mentally visualizing things so that I could understand how they worked even at that age. This is something that I think I inherited from my father's side of the family, as he could do this designing houses. That innate ability combined with my strong imagination/creativity, I was actually quite dangerous to be around growing up as a child.

QC, is the third grade where you went to school about 8 years old?

Yes. My parents noticed my reading ability much earlier than that, but it was public school-tested at that time. Basically, my teachers did not know what to do with me on that area. They had never seen someone be so advanced in that area. They were used to kids being a level or two above, but not a decade above. I was granted access to the high school library for anything I wanted to read. Soon, my reading comprehension went to graduate school level after constant reading of my special topic areas. I was placed in a gifted program there, whereby I was given problems to solve at different levels. I went through the material that they had in stock much quicker than they ever expected me to.

When we moved to a new state (after I finished 5th grade), I was put into a public school that treated everyone the same regardless of what tests showed and tended to bully those outside of the average. I decided it was best to hide most of my special abilities during that time. I was tested there once (they forgot to do so until two years later) and the scores were disclosed to others that should not have been. Unfortunately, that lead to an escalation of the problems that I was facing there on all levels.

Your story seems to resemble one of my own in some ways. In 2nd grade, my class was told to use (1960s) filmstrip projectors to assist our reading skills by projecting a word or sentence at a time before advancing to the next word or sentence. After just a few minutes, I returned my filmstrip to my educator claiming to have completed the project. The educator expressed serious doubt, and told me to do it again until she would tell me to stop. So, to keep my interest active, I projected (and read) the filmstrip backwards, upside down and at the highest speed.

By doing this, I ended up teaching myself speed reading and some mirror reading as well during that week. I didn't learn until college that Da Vinci had used mirror writing himself. Years later, I remarked about a newspaper report which my father was reading opposite of me after a single glance of the first paragraph from across the table and upside down. He was quite surprised when I told him how I had learned to do that and more (mirror reading).

This was just one of my odd behaviors and skills at the time. I don't know if it rises to the level of savantism (other of my behaviors and skills probably do a better job of it), but seems to show that I was imitating, improvising and creating without any assistance to do so. I was simply bored to tears, otherwise.

AU, I think that there is probably a gradient of savant skills, just as there is in many kinds of ability. The NTEs have (probably) focused only on a small part of that gradient and mistaken it for the whole. They can't see it perhaps because they never looked for it, their conceptualisation was too confined by their enfreakment idea to see beyond it - perhaps a metaphor for most of the AS research.

I could read before I went to school. When I was still in a pram, my Mum would give me the shopping list and I would read out what we needed as she pushed me around the shop. Mum told me she was very offended one day when someone in a shop asked her what I was doing. She said she's reading the list to me and the person said no she isn't. She is just recognizing the words, not reading.
By the age of 8, I was reading Chekhov and Dostoyevsky which my teacher felt was extremely inappropriate and she said I wasn't allowed to bring books like that to school. I also got into trouble because when she told the class to choose a book to read, I got the dictionary as it was the most interesting book on the shelves She really didn't like me.

Thank you very much for that interesting report. All grist to the mill at this stage, important recollections from which some new insights may emerge in future.