Myth: People with autism have genius talents.

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That would upset the so many autisnobs here:

Myth: People with autism have genius talents.

Reality: There's not a great deal known about savant syndrome, the very curious condition in which people with developmental disorders such as autism show astonishing skills in music, art, or math. But we do know that the widespread misconception about its prominence is traceable to the 1988 film "Rain Man," and that the movie's hero would be exceptionally skilled, and exceptionally rare, even among savants.

According to Darold A. Treffert, M.D., of the Wisconsin Medical Society—a recognized expert on savant syndrome— approximately one in 10 people with autism spectrum disorder has some savant skills. (Among those with other developmental disabilities, fewer than 1 in 100 are savants.) Treffert estimates that no more than 50 people in the world are "prodigious savants" like the toothpick-counting character portrayed by Dustin Hoffman.

Beware the characterization of genius, too. The famous "calculating twins" written about by Oliver Sacks, M.D., in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hatcould see prime numbers in a fallen stack of matches or tell you which day of the week July 4 would fall on in the year 3024, but they couldn't do simple multiplication.

http://health.msn.com/health-topics/art ... &Gt1=31036

We are just like any humans beings....with weaker natural social skills.

I'd call the memory that most people with prototypical AS and many with HFA have as a talent. Most people with the latter tend to have one splinter skill that's above-average in most cases on the severe end of functioning, and the AS end have said aforementioned memory.

I assume you're talking about hyperlexia, calendar calculation, etcetera, and yeah, they're rarer. But the memory, that's quite common, and it's even there in LFA too.

One in ten is still a good quota, though. And some people suspect a link between good mathematical skills and autistic personality traits. But I have to agree the generalization "People with autism have genius talents" is a myth.

I'm not sure what really qualifies someone as a "savant."

I'm sure many of the "genius" things people with AS can do comes from an intense focus or interest on a topic and not some special wiring of the brain.

I don't consider myself a savant, but here's something I can do. When I study for an exam, I don't know if I "know" the material or not. Studying is very stressful for me.

Then, I sit down for the exam and POP, all the information on the subject seems to come at me like a photographic recall. Because of this "quirk," I learned to stop worrying about studying so much and just put quality time into reviewing my class notes and trust my weird brain to do the rest. I didn't get A's on every test, but I realized I seem to recall information when I really need it and not when I might want it but not need it.

Spending an hour reviewing my notes often got me as good a grade as someone who spend 3 days preparing for the same exam.

There's a couple of definitions of savant; one where someone has a subscore on a IQ test that's way higher than the rest of the subscores. Others say that one needs the aforementioned hyperlexia, calendar calculation, toothpick counting thingy, etcetera.

The cognitive profile of individuals with an ASD is different to normal individuals; whilst you can say that the single mindedness creates the great memory, but people with an ASD retain such in their heads even if the interest has moved on. You'd think that they'd forget the information if they lose interest..., but nope.

Whilst I see that there's more negatives to run-of-the-mill AS and HFA in today's society, they do have positives that are unique to the two populations.

Agreed.

I only received the diagnoses in November and I've already had two people ask whether I'm 'really great at math'.

But like Danielismyname said, the long term memory alot of us posses does give us an advantage. Combine that with a special interest or a number of interests that we spend hours pouring over and the amount of information we can retain might look superhuman to some people. The high IQ some AS people have doesn't hurt either. All in all, this still doesn't mean that even a sizable chunk of us qualify as genii.

I have this same strange ability. I can often spend less than 4 hours revising for a test, have no idea if I know the information, then get 95-100% on said test. In Maths B (algebra maths) in my final years of school I would literally sit down for one day before each exam, learn an entire terms repetoire in that one day, then in the exam have perfect recall. I came out of maths with a A. In fact, I got A's in 6 out of 7 subjects, but I think a lot of it was to do with this ability (except in English). The ability was especially prominent in subjects like biology, where I'd get 100% or extremely close to it in every single exam as I would have photographic recall of every term I looked at - even if I only looked at it once.

But then, by about a week after the exam, all this knowledge is lost and gone. So it's a fairly useless ability really, except for getting good grades and short term recall.

I knew many "brilliant"/nerdy students who were used to study just one day before the exams and get As and then they forget everything, this is a common ability among the nerdy/brilliants students and they were not autistics in any sense, only very very few brilliant students can recall complicated math rules for life from year to year, those were usually the top students.

I don't know if it's anything to do with autism or not, but I do know (I had some other high achieving friends) that for my friends getting A's without too much study came to them because they grasped the concepts really fast, and once they understood all the general ideas, they could fill in the gaps with specific terms.

For me, I never learned so much in generalities as I would literally learn each specific term one at a time - like memorizing a long long list of scientific names for different plant species and then other words linked in to the concepts and what each word meant, rather than just the concept itself. Then the concept would make sense to me after I'd memorize massive amounts of highly specific tiny details of information, rather than the other way around.

It's a hard thing to explain.

My IQ was measured as above average but nothing approaching genius. I've always suffered from the "little professor" syndrome but that's just a method of information gathering and dispensing, not anything to do with my ability to generate valuable new insight.

I have no special math ability but people do comment on my ability to remember details of issues of concern (to me).

Pretty typical stuff.

Check my edited post.
Your description is much more common than what you think, I knew many students (and for some odd reason mostly females) who where used to literally memorize their studies like this, not very effective for the long term but very effective for getting As.

Yes, it's probably pretty normal. Either way, whether it's characteristically aspergers or not (I always thought it might be simply because I never met anyone else who did the same thing - thus a good example of the failure of personal experience as a source of knowledge), it's definitely not a genius trait.

Actually, it ISN'T a myth! It is a FACT that some DO! If you want to call it a myth, maybe you should add the word ALL!

There you go, saying a lot of us have long term memory I sure as hell don't.

I guess to me, it comes down to how I relate to humans. I ran and programmed my own BBS computer system in 1985 it the age of 16. I just found it a lot easier to socialize with text than deal with the strong and erratic emotions of people. Erratic ideas I can deal with in my mind, erratic emotions [in particular "negative vibes"?] - humm. Left me feeling groggy and overwhelmed.

I've made a career out of the computer skills. I had computer book work publishd at age 21, and got serious into e-mail systems (including work on that published) at age 27... and here I am at age 39, preference to talk about my recently discovered and realized AS here on a text based forum instead of talking with therapist S-L-O-W-L-Y for $120/hour.

I've overdeveloped my reading skills my entire life. I find it so much more enjoyable to relate to people by what they write than by how they blink their eyes, cross their legs, or who knows what else I don't even know to look for.

My point is: I spend a lot of time reading. Both my short term and long term memory aren't very good. I constantly have to look things up. Someone says a phone number, I can't remember it minutes later. Even if I write it down, i can't remember where I put it 3 weeks later. I have however overdeveloped my ability to find it again (great at Google searches, helping other people search their own mind, etc.).

Maybe I don't have any special abilities, I just invest more time learning/homework than others do... ? I mean, we do often cut out the social life. Even while watching TV, I often am reading on my laptop. I do take movies and movie-like (continuing story) TV shows (West Wing, Lost, Mad Men) seriously though and focus 100%.


People Skills
===========
Changing the topic to another example
Don't you often hear the same thing about our people skills. Smalltalk at parties are boring as hell and make me want to flee. But man, you meet the love of your life, you can't get enough of that eye contact and I can't imagine not wanting to have 4 hours of quality time a day. AS people can be smothering and "needy" to the NT spouses and partners.

The phrase "one track mind" comes to screen for me. But not sex, just whatever our interest truly is. That exaggerated honesty, that "true self" that we show. And in most cases, I find we aren't obsessive stalkers, but people feel that way based on our behavior. But if you clearly explain to me you don't like me or want my attention, I respect and honor. It's that "first engagement" part that's tricky. That intense interest in learning about someone and what they are about - that probably scares off the potential friends (or dates).

--- Truth is, I mean it, If I'm truly staring at you or attracted to you. It's probably more about how you act or something you said. Sex is probably not on my mind. I am drawn toward intimacy. understanding, attention, shared experiences, to show you my special interest - and to be understood. Yha yha, you might "turn me on", I'm a healthy male. But I probably think about sex a lot less than the other men when it comes to why you caught my attention.

Again, that doesn't mean I obsess over "being with you". I just take a longer time to ramp up getting to know someone (it takes a lot more effort for me to learn about a woman's self than what you see on the outside. I look deeper than her superficial looks and measuring the size of her outside goodies). And I probably take longer to get over / ramp down a relationship too. As it's all in my head and thinking about that person. It can take a while to unwind it all. I'd compare it more to "integration thinking" than obsession. I guess it goes along with the first 5 times I see you and I have to work so hard to remember your name and face

I've had some very healthy spits with women in my life, even one I really loved that left me at age 21. We have recently reconnected and as part of my AS learning, we are in fact talking about our split and relationship issues 18 years later.

Last edited by TobyZ on 19 Apr 2009, 10:08 am, edited 2 times in total.

When I look at my family autism and intelligence are not linked.

My father is a bit autistic (I think) and little intelligent, my mother is quite intelligent. My brother is a bit autistic and moderately intelligent. And I am autistic and quite intelligent. My sister is NT and moderately intelligent.

So intelligence and autism does not seem to be linked in our case.

Luckily intelligence can help to fake certain social skills, but it is absolutely not enough. So I still have to work on my social skills a lot.


And like LPP says, being savant is not a broad intelligence, it is really narrow. I know (from my volunteer work) one autistic kid of nine years old that 'sees' certain physics processes and predict them in a way that not even a 16 year old NT could do. But he does not seem 'intelligent' on other areas. But discussing physics experiments together is still fun.

I already gave up on the hope of being talented in anything, its not even important. But i still wonder how comes that some are talented and most aren't...