How do you tell if someone is a savant?

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It's not the talent that makes you a savant. It's the ability to do something almost instinctively, with hardly any practice or none at all.

Talent is a person who picks up drawing at an early age, learns it easily, and draws incredibly realistic artwork by the age of twelve. (You might also call this person a "prodigy" because of their young age, especially if they were capable of this not just at twelve but at five.)

Savant is a person who, one day (perhaps after a brain injury, perhaps not), is introduced to pencil and paper and, after minimal time to get used to using the pencil, produces the same sort of artwork that might be expected to take the average individual a lot of practice to learn.

It is possible, for example, for a typical person to learn calendar calculation. However, he would have to practice at it for quite a while before he got the hang of it. Savant calendar calculation, on the other hand, doesn't take much learning.

Savant skills are basically what happens when your brain is wired in such a way that some skill comes so naturally to you that it might as well be an instinct. They also have to be unusual enough that they would take a typical person a while to learn; so you can't consider the toddler's ability to learn languages a "savant skill" because it is not unusual.

Because the autistic brain develops in unusual ways, savant syndrome is much more common among autistic people. It is also common among developmentally delayed individuals. (I have met one such individual, whose savant skill allows her to replay music on the piano after she has heard it. She also taught herself to read as a toddler. Because of her mild MR, she is currently being paid less than $6 a week to do piecework in a sweatshop... sorry, no, I mean "sheltered workshop". Yes, it is unjust.)

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That is what I WANTED to say, but I lack the eloquence!

That is such a shame about your friend. Savants should be "used" (my lack of eloquence again) for their skills in the appropriate way.

What do you mean by "mild MR"? I don't know that abbreviation.

OH! you mean Mental Retardation.

Nevermind

I've heard before that the cut offs for being a savant for some group is that the skill is at least one standard deviation beyond average human, and at least two standard deviations beyond your average abilities - you can have geniuses who are savants, their skills just need to be that much more extreme to qualify under this definition.

The other thing is like Callista mentioned, not having to put practice into it.

As for how do you tell, I'm not sure how you can tell the difference between someone having practiced and someone's brain just being wired that way other than asking them.

Sorry about reviving an otherwise dead thread, but here's something I found about this topic.

According to this website, there are three levels of skill that fit in with the savant category: splintered, talented, and prodigious. Also, according to that site (along with many others), "Approximately ten per cent of people with autism show special or even remarkable skills" and implied, fits the claim that around 10% of those with autism exhibit such behavior.

The website goes further with these other claims:

"Splinter skills are considered to be the most common type: The person, like an obsessive hobbyist, commits certain things to memory, such as sports trivia."

"Talented skills describe people who 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 mentally."

While it goes on to say that prodigious skills are the "rarest type" and fits the description of people like Steven Wiltshire and David Hammet. In my opinion, the comparison of who's a savant and who isn't by alluding to prodigious savants is probably exaggerating how rare the existence of savants are. If 10% of autistic individuals are savants, then it would be ridiculous that 10% exhibit prodigious skills knowing that it's the rarest type. There's also the fact that many autistic individuals do fit in with the description of "splinter skills" and according to many sources, they are considered remarkable as savant behavior despite one not actually being born with that knowledge in the first place. I could even say that my OCD allows me the ability to recall many facts and is especially helpful when I'm studying for a test (I recently made a 105 on a Sociology test at college through this ability). I've also been told that I'm extremely talented with art and yesterday was the first time that I've heard anyone tell me that they want OCD and Autism if it allows them to "draw like [I] do" so possibly I have a talented skill as well. Many of you probably have such skills as well, but that doesn't mean that development isn't anything to strive for, possibly, some of us have talents that we know nothing about that we actually have, I mean, our minds do think differently, it isn't impossible that our skills manifest themselves differently as well!

So basically, what I'm trying to say is that we should focus on developing our skills since like it or not, we live in a neurotypical world, as much as they should accommodate us, we have to allow ourselves to integrate as well, and performing our specialized skills is one way to do that. It doesn't matter if we're savants or not, what matters is that if we have the abilities, we should do our best with our skills, I mean, celebrities are basically just people with the right skills at the right time, let's not put ourselves (or each other) down in this manner.

I've never met a savant, only very talented people who work very hard.