General question on autistic savants

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what kind of advanced skills do savants have?

There are many kinds. I spent some time yesterday on youtube watching savants... pretty cool stuff, I think. Someone here posted awhile back a video of an artistic savant who took a helicopter ride and drew the city. That video is definitely worth watching. I do not know a lot about savants, but I do believe their skills are many and varied. I do not know how to better respond to this question...

This is from The Better Health Channel website:

A range of savant abilities
Around 10 per cent of people with autism show special or even remarkable skills. The skills range includes:

Splinter skills - the most common type. The person, like an obsessive hobbyist, commits certain things to memory, such as sports trivia.

Talented skills - the person has a more highly developed and specialised skill. For example, they may be artistic and paint beautiful pictures, or have a memory that allows them to work out difficult mathematical calculations in their head.

Prodigious skills - the rarest type. It is thought that there are only about 25 autistic savants in the world who show prodigious skills. These skills could include, for example, the ability to play an entire concerto on the piano after hearing it only once.

Specialised skill
In all cases of savant syndrome, the skill is specific, limited and most often reliant on memory.
Generally, savant skills include:

Music - the piano is the most popular instrument. For example, the skill may be the ability to play the piano without being taught.

Art - such as the ability to draw, paint or sculpt to high standards. For example, Richard Wawro is an autistic savant who is also blind, but his crayon drawings command up to $10,000 each.

Mathematics - for example, the ability to work out complicated sums in their head, or to calendar calculate (for example, work out what day it was on 1 June1732).

Language - in rare cases, the person may be unusually gifted in languages.

Other skills - such as knowing the time without seeing a clock, untaught mechanical skills, having an unfailing sense of direction or the ability to commit maps to memory.

I am an autistic talented skills music savant. If I become fascinated by a musical instrument, I can play it well in a short amount of time (usually from a day to a week) without lessons or training. Instruments I currently play are the trombone, organ, piano, synthesizer, mountain dulcimer, banjmo, hammered dulcimer, and echo harp harmonica. When I play a dulcimer, I cannot tell you what notes I am hitting---it's like my fingers just fall onto the frets that they are supposed to. I have come up with a saying for me, "The music just happens." But first, and very important, I have to be fascinated by the instrument. I am not fascinated by the guitar, so I cannot play it at all. So my fascination lies not so much with the music as it does with the instrument itself. When I play music publicly, it is like a glass shield forms around me isolating me from the crowd. After the music stops, the shield opens.

Since I have an incredible fascination with wooden roller coasters, by the time I was in high school, I had memorized the statistics (height, length, year of construction, designer, builder, general layout, ride time, and amusement park location) of every wooden (and most steel) roller coasters in the United States, Canada, and Mexico without studying. I would read about the ride, and the information would stick.

I hope I have helped some on this. I know the statistic states that 10% of us autistics are savants of one of the three types, but it has been suggested that as many as 50% actually are savants. Also important to note is that savant syndrome can occur in NTs as well. Some people have actually become a savant after a brain injury or seizure. It is a fascinating thing to study.

For all intents and purposes, their minds pick up on patterns of interest and can manipulate what they see/hear, etc. For example, some can calculate what day any date landed on, many calculate large numbers in moments, and some can duplicate any music they hear. Other than that, they are quite cool, but on the down side, many of them will require assisted living for the rest of their lives (severe autism cases). However, i recall some news group in England covering an AS savant (number cruncher). What he describes is that numbers come to him in forms of color arrangements, some of which he describes as "ugly."

Was that Daniel Tammet? A very cool individual indeed.

I have some isolated savant skills - perfect pitch and hyperlexia, for example. But my brother is a mental calculator. He has the unusual benefit of understanding the arithmetic, which many savants don't.

I would almost say that most autistics by definition have savant traits - not necessarily the dramatic skills associated with savant syndrome, but our brains focus and organize things in a specific way that lends itself to such overspecialization and splinter skills.

For me, on the piano, the high notes of the upper octave are grapes. And the low notes of the bottom octave is the top of a wood or coal burning stove. I can remember as a little child tinkering on a piano seeing grapes in my mind as I struck the high notes.

Google Daniel Tammet,

Prodigious Savant, mathematical and languages

One hour documentary 'Brainman' can be found on You Tube.

He is diagnosed with AS and financially independent at just 30.

My son David diagnosed Aspergers Syndrome/Savant Syndrome picked up a guitar just over a year ago......he has amazed everyone. He learned on 3 string guitar in our garage, 2wks later he was playing guitar solo's such as Hotel California. He is self taught and cannot read music. He is totally passionate and spends over 12hrs practicing a day, although it isn't practicing it is him feeling alive. When he plugs in to a Marshall Amp he suddenly feels awake and alive, it is his oxygen.

Only 4yrs ago he was a lonely aspie who had nothing to look forward to, he walked with his head down and gave no eye contact. Now though he is a totally different lad who has a bright future ahead of him. I am incredibly proud of him. Hope you enjoy this a totally improvised version of Purple Rain. Marshall Amplification have noticed him and have named him a Virtuoso. I have 5 children all diagnosed on the spectrum as I am also

I hope you enjoy

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Cx9-wlb-A[/youtube]

I wouldn't consider myself an autistic savant, but I do have some splinter skills or odd talents. I always know what time it is without a watch or a clock down to the minute. I have an amazing sense of direction and easily memorize maps, and never get lost, even in a place I've never been to. I always know somehow which direction I'm going in....and people often call me when they're lost or need directions somewhere.

wow! his guitar playing is so beautiful!

Thank you very much for this list of skills... it seems I have two. For a very long time I was unable to understand why other people didn't learn languages as well or as fast as I do, and simply assumed that it was laziness on their part. I was in my thirties before I realised that my brain aquires language far more rapidly and easily than most people. I read several dead languages, and speak twelve living languages. My son has counted languages that he's heard me conversing in, and tells people that I speak thirty odd, but that's not actually true. Although I can understand some languages, and make myself understood in them, that doesn't mean I "speak" them. I understand them as a form of dialect, if that makes sense. So, for example, when we were in Belgium I could understand Flemish, and make myself understood, but I wasn't there long enough to "learn" the language. However, when I'm immersed in a culture, it generally takes me about three weeks to learn the language.

I understand there are other folks who are even faster though, and attain a higher level of fluency in that time. But, I realise now that learning a language to A level standard when it comes to speaking and listening in less than a month is indeed an unusual talent.

Languages fit differently in my head. I see German, Afrikaans, Dutch, for example, as being one language, different dialects, and this speeds up my learning process. I am always finding patterns in words and languages, and they slot together much quicker.

Non European languages have presented more of a challenge, but I found myself able to converse to a reasonable level in Xhosa after a few weeks, and my spoken Chinese is now very good.

I wonder does this have anything to do with musical ability? Because like Glider18, once I become fascinated with an instrument, I can generally play it in very short order. I also have whatever the aural equivalent of a photographic memory is. If I hear a piece of music once it's in my head forever. (And believe me, it can be annoying if you wake up at three in the morning with a Chinese nursery rhyme going through your head.)

Other than linguistics and music though, I don't have any special skills. I have a very good memory (I remember most things I read or hear, whether I want to or not) but I don't consider that a skill. Not counting my language skills, I'm of above average intelligence, but I wonder to what extent that is merely memory.

It is in this area that my doctor most strongly identified my "aspie-ism". Particularly splinter and talented skills (visual/aural arts).
I am a self-taught artist/quilter/composer/piano player. What I cannot do is "xerox copy" existing work. Instead, I break the individual components down to patterns that I then re-arrange/re-assemble to suit my needs at the time.
It is also because of this that I have struggled (DO struggle) to understand the difference between "skill" and "talent". People always told me how "talented" I was or how "creative" I am when I simply think of myself as being skilled. Especially when one considers the process I go through of dissecting or given medium so that I can better understand it's individual components.
To me, making music, drawing or quilting is no different that building something with (dare I say it?) Legos: There are finite number of individual pieces that can be assembled into an infinite variety of ways; understanding the smallest building blocks is what makes building the whole project possible for me. It certainly doesn't come "naturally".

There you go, Writer's Block... that's exactly how I feel about language. Lego... once you can break down the blocks, you can see how they fit together. Then you can manipulate it, and make new patterns... speech, music... it's simply shapes. Lego is exactly the word I've used myself when trying to explain how languages seem to me.

Jelibean... I just have to say, your son is a true inspiration. I love his music, and the fact that he's so completely given over to it. I'm glad that he found something which gives him such joy.

Nice! As a talentless rock fan, I am always in awe of people who can play guitar well. It's my favorite instrument to listen to. I enjoyed your son's take on Purple Rain, a song I've always liked.

As a parent I can thoroughly understand the joy you are feeling as you seem him find his thing. My daughter is going through a bad patch right now and I hope she can find something that gets her through.

Thank you sooo much everyone for your wonderful comments about David. It is most kind of you to take the trouble to click in and to post. Yes I am VERY proud of him as I am all of my children, but David is growing into a wonderful young man with I know a huge talent....must get it from me!! !

If anyone is interested my colleague Barbara Jacobs who is just completing a late life PhD in Autism wrote a piece on WHY David is like he is and explaining a bit about Savant syndrome and the spectrum. I hope you find it interesting.

http://www.jelibean.com/ladder2/index.p ... &Itemid=66


edited to add, thank you Janissy, I am soo sorry your daughter is going through a bad patch, I know what that feels like.....I can empathise. Focus in on her special interests whatever those are, that will get her through. For those of us on the spectrum if we can find a PASSION we are safe. I wish you lots of luck and hope she comes through it very soon xx

Last edited by jelibean on 20 Oct 2009, 2:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Although I don't apply the term savant to myself, I have an exceptional gift for certain types of abstract reasoning, which applies to most math and physics, and other disciplines as well.

I spontaneously know the answers to problems that others find extremely difficult. To give an example, in the most advanced Grade 12 math class I didn't do a single problem, assigned or otherwise, throughout the course of the school year. Final exams were provided by, and marked anonymously by, the Department of Education. My mark was the highest in the history of the school (I missed a single point). Academics were extremely easy for me, in general. I NEVER did a single minute of homework at home, and in Grade 12 was probably the only student not to have a single study period (boring!). Nonetheless, my overall average was the highest in the school and I was awarded scholarships that more than paid for my university.

This thread is not about behavior but, as one might guess from my absolute refusal to do any homework, my behavior at school, and at home, was more than a bit unusual as well.

On the flip side, I have deficits in other areas. For example, I have no capability to be creative (including art and acting), and no musical ability. I do have an exceptional memory and speak two foreign languages very fluently.