Research study on savantism in ASD

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http://www.amaze.org.au/2017/09/up-to-t ... s-than-pre

“About 30 per cent of adults on the spectrum do display these very special abilities. Back in the Eighties we thought it was less than 10 percent of people on the spectrum had these special skills".

IEP plans for savant skills in pupils at school:
http://www.positivepartnerships.com.au/ ... ant-skills

Thank you for sharing those links. I was not aware that savantism had two official classification levels until now. It makes sense that it would, as one could have varying degrees of abilities in different areas, as in the example of the child on the second website.

I had learned that savants were only 10 percent of the autistic population ( https://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org ... realities/ ), too. Under such a described rate, and by researching those individuals diagnosed as savants, it seemed to me that my restricted interests (genealogy, history, law and politics) which I learned autodidactically and simultaneously at age 13 years seemed to be merely prodigiousness instead of savantism; and prodigiousness is said to fade as prodigies' former special talents come to match their increasing ages and those of their professional cohorts.

Now, with new research suggesting the savantism rate includes three times the number of the usual suspects, I can see that my interests continued into adulthood where I became recognized as writing state and local laws, and corporate policies ... without ever spending a minute in law school. I also maintained a somewhat influential political career over 35 years by observing, mimicking and remembering ... again without (much) formal education. These aided me in my professional life in marketing and public relations, and government, where I held my own against others with advanced academic degrees.

So, the question I have is, apart from contacting Darold A. Treffert, M.D., how does one pursue a diagnosis for savantism? I believed that they were recruited for diagnosis, not pursuing one.

Where do we draw a line between being talented and savantism? Where do we draw a line between ASD and NT? To me, they are all arbitrary and statistics may change massively with exploring and re-drawing the borders.

I believe that savantism is a distinction with a difference. As for boundaries, I would support the idea of extraordinary expression coming from savants. After all, how many 13-year-old boys teach themselves genealogy, history, law and politics all in the same year, and continue to use those skills successfully through the next few decades of their lives?

Other recent references:

https://spectrumnews.org/features/deep- ... nd-autism/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677586/

If I struggle to remember what day of the week is today and need to concentrate all my power to make a simple telephone call, yet do cutting-edge research in quantum chemistry... does it make me a savant? I always thought I just fit the stereotype of an absent-minded scientist.

I'm trying to remember if I ever impressed people with my abilities... Teachers - several times... My dad, an engineer, was quite impressed when he found out I understood binary system before even going to school. My mom was always careful not to be impressed because she wished I was "normal", a good wife and mother material, not some strange, lone researcher...

So, am I a savant? I'm not disabled, at least not in a way that anyone would notice.

It seems the people called savants - severily disabled and exceptionally gifted - are just a peak of an iceberg of the great gifted-here-disabled-elsewhere population.

Not all savants retain their savant abilities after childhood. Mine seem to have tailed off up to the age of 40, I couldn't do any of the savant things I could do before that age now - which involved unusual abilities in music, maths and memory.

I still have a good memory, though nothing out of the ordinary now. I could hardly play a scale properly now, despite passing music exams with the highest possible marks in my childhood (I played in a trance state sometimes, unaware I was playing at all, achieving scores of 100% by the examiners). As a teen I could sometimes look at a maths problem in exams and instantly know the answer, and not know how I knew; the answers were always correct, but when I consciously worked out similar problems, I made errors sometimes, as "normal" people do.

Memory.. in childhood and up to 40, I could read a full page of a difficult textbook (text and calculus) and reproduce it exactly from memory exactly up to a few days later. Exams were easy because I only had to read the text book once, as long as I read it fairly close to the exam, no more than a week before preferably. However I could do none of these things on command - demands made me freeze with anxiety.

The savantism abilities for me were sporadic, and the inconsistency of my music and maths performances (which varied between flawless and ordinary) perplexed and sometimes annoyed adults ("you aren't even trying today"). I was unable to talk to anyone about it, no-one understood what was happening; and it made me feel very isolated at times, it was a lonely experience.

There is a huge difference between the savant talents I once had and my normalised abilities now. I prefer my life now, really, and as a child I wanted to be "just ordinary", to be just like the other kids. They envied me, I envied them.

I think there is a general idea out there that savants are savants for life, and some seem to be. A tailing off has been mentioned in the literature, and it certainly happened to me. I was never intellectually impaired as some claim savants are; there are so many gaps in the research to date that myths possibly predominate at this stage. People like me perhaps haven't spoken of their experience (I haven't until now) and would never volunteer for research, because of privacy concerns and the IHC myth (a myth when it is applied to all savants). Nor did we want to be compared to the Rainman stereotype.. Times are changing though, and as more is known, more will come forward in future perhaps, and more contextualisation will emerge. It's early days.

You may well be a savant. Chemistry is a field that attracts the very gifted HFAs and the ones I know (three of them) have done extraordinarily well in that field, and famous chemists like Dirac seem to show very unusual abilities (also very very likely was on the spectrum, and possibly a closet savant too).

Do you think there might be a Bell curve of savantism?

John Elder Robinson seems to have been a savant at electronic design, but then became a generalist. I didn't appreciate my own abilities, until others spent decades struggling to do half as much, and then I tried to do it again myself. As with "Sheldon Cooper," trying to get along with the wider variety of people I was meeting due to success ruined the focus needed.

I know of that tv programme though have never seen it.

"The Big Bang Theory" is the only TV I watch, via YouTube clips. I don't share any of the other enthusiasms promoted on the show, but it is fun to imagine having friends. I told my counsellor that to understand the show, you have to assume that Sheldon holds a lease in a very tight market. I suppose that his early recognition helps a lot, too.

Quite likely. Given that much of the last 125 years saw savantism go popularly from brilliant adults to brilliant children and back again, certainly the attention drove much of the public awareness and research (something that is still lacking). But, I wonder if this attention responds less to savantism normalizing (fading) somewhat in older savants' aging when it might be simply a lack of interest or opportunities for the aging adult savant to maintain special abilities. Perhaps, then, the abilities stick around, but wane and wax depending on life-cycle conditions.

In my life, I am no longer as involved with my abilities and interests as I used to be, but still can influence matters if and when I see the need.

In my search for some firmer diagnostic criteria, I found these good studies:

http://www.psy.dmu.ac.uk/drhiles/Savant%20Syndrome.htm

https://www.verywell.com/what-is-an-aut ... ant-260033

http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/3407/3640

https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 013-1906-8

I was even more hardcore with it: I read a chapter in a compendium an hour before biology tests - always scored high and remembered nothing a few days later Never liked biology but it was easy to have good grades that way.


As you said it, I realised I have the same. There are days when I do the most difficult tasks almost without an effort - and days when I struggle with the simpliest. I started to notice it as a teenager, so for long time my hormones were to be blamed - but it wasn't synchronised with my cycle.
I accepted it, try to do as much as possible when I'm on my highs and relax when I'm on my lows. It seems relaxing helps the "efficient time" to return earlier. Not very easy with the life of daily stress but I'm working on it.

I was the same with biology in high school. It basically was a memorization game to me, one that I could easily master. I competed against another science student who decided that it was her major area of interest. We basically messed up all of the other students' exam scores, as the teacher initially had set it up with standard curving (highest score gets 100%, assuming that it was lower than 100%)). When we both got all possible points (and all possible extra credit points) on each exam/quiz, the curve actually lowered the rest of the scores automatically. The teacher had to adjust the curving at the end to exclude us in it because we were causing too many students to fail the class and they were complaining to the administration about it. The other student finally edged me out by half a point at the end of the semester on a project (bug collecting/labeling), so she could claim to be a better biologist overall. I was fine with that, as I found it to be overall dry and boring as a subject. So, I went into the realm of chemistry and physics instead. I am at home there.



Whether or not I am classified as a savant is not really important to me. I just want to understand what causes the way I am. I know that I have some gifts that are far above average and have been told so by others many times since I was young. It does not make me "better" than anyone else. If anything, it leads to more problems dealing with people who are envious/jealous when they should not be.

Case in point:The majority of my coworkers at the university do not understand me at all. They struggle with coming up with new ideas with research all of the time. I simply do not. I just do what is natural to me. Creative thinking awareness is something that I have developed and fostered over my life. However, not all of my gifts are blessings. They have costs to my sanity...

As I progress through the road of life, I have found that my special skills tend to improve with age. But, that could be from having honed them with proper usage after discovering them. I know that they helped me survive the trials of graduate school, especially the cume/oral exams. Because I am a very visual thinker/learner, I have adapted to using that to my advantage. If I can mentally visualize the subject matter in my head, it generally becomes much easier to learn, even in a very short period of time.

Thank you all for the very interesting comments, and for the links as well AspieUtah. This morning I have been flooded with memories and the emotional impact of re-feeling and re-experiencing these is so intense that I am not able to respond today. It was very helpful to me to read your comments, ameliorating part of the painful isolation stemming from this that I have carried silently for 7 decades. In respect of HFA savantism, this is the first day of my life that I no longer feel completely alone.

The very abilities that my many employers (and friends) enjoyed about me were the things that caused them to dismiss and avoid me later on. So, I know what you mean.