Please read: Does savantism occur on a spectrum?

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Does savantism occur on a spectrum the same way an ASD does? I know not everyone with a savant ability is autistic and not all autistics are savants.

I don't believe I'm a true savant in the strictest sense of the word, but I wonder if some abilities I have occur in a "grey area" or spectrum. You have your world-class amazing savants like Daniel Tammet and that guy who can draw nearly perfect pictures of cities from memory (can't remember his name), and then at the opposite end, you have "parlor trick" abilities; minor abilities that are still unusual.

I have an ear for languages and music and have all-but-mastered a foreign accent within minutes of hearing it for the first time. With witnesses present and the person speaking the foreign language telling me it was amazing and "very close" to having no accent, that I did in a few minutes what others couldn't do in many years. Would this be considered a "savant-like" parlor ability? I "see" the language in my head and repeat it exactly as I "see" it.

Last edited by -Skeksis- on 05 Dec 2011, 8:54 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Did I violate an unspoken rule by asking this?

I am bright academically but not a savant. I don't know if your example is a savant ability as I do not know a lot about it.

No, not really. I don't think so anyway, but I can tell you the reason I didn't click on it at first was because of the subject line. Savant abilities has been a "hot button" topic because of the way it's been presented by some users in the past. Some get a little worked up over the stereotypical aspect of the topic.

I can't really comment on the idea of it being "spectrum-like" because I've never thought of it that way. It's an interesting concept though. I would say what you can do could be called "savant-like," but I think it's a subjective call. Then again, what isn't?

How do you find your inner ability?

I stumbled across my non savant ability by accident. I just try stuff sometimes and find I can do it lol.

No idea. It's not something I have any conscious memory learning. It's just there.

Many people on the spectrum are good mimics of accents. I remember Rudy Simone (speaker about AS) making this comments in her talks. She is also a jazz singer, so she has a good ear for music too.

I can copy accents too. It becomes a little embarrassing when I am talking with someone from a non-native background, because I automatically start mimicking their accent. I cannot help it. I remember travelling to the Middle East and - after a day or two mixing with locals - realising that I was thinking in broken English. A bit bizarre for someone who has (Anglo-Australian) English as their first language.

Interesting. No really, this is. I have occasionally been mistaken for a Southerner (U.S. and only by Northerners BTW ~ I'm pretty sure real Southerners would be able to tell but not positive )

The only reason I can think of for it happening is because I used to listen to a ton of southern rock. A lot of it live. I think I may have subconsciously mimicked it.

I mimic accents of people I care about. It's been a mix of Canadian (Daniel Jackson, Stargate SG1) and English (Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter). I actually love both those actors.

I've written a lot about it and I'll just try to pick out some examples from memory about what I think about it.

When I am lost on what to say I will automatically put on an accent and usually let out a long line of echolalia or when I have to explain something I will put on the Canadian accent, so I'm explaining something to you with the speed Dr. Daniel Jackson does, because I need to in order to get all those words out. I'll even dress a bit like the characters I'm mimicking.

Also, to help me read or write I sometimes need to have an accent in my head to help me read. When I was reading a book by Michio Kaku I had his accent in my head and it's usually Daniel Jackson or another Stargate actor.

For me personally it has helped with empathy and relating to people, or at least talking to them more.


As a child I would have been considered an artistic savant. I wasn't very bright but boy could I draw and draw for hours. If I stuck with it past age 10 I may have gone really far. I'm still good. I can eventually draw what I want; my attention to detail sort of gets in the way of seeing just where everything is in terms of scale, 3D, perspective. But if I slow myself down and start with lines and circles liek you're supposed to, I can draw a decent scene.

I think higher functioning savantism needs to be a highly skilled talent to get the title and savantism is usually about someone with an intellectually disability but with one skills they have a genius level of knowledge of. I think the title is there so NT's can go 'oooh ahh.'
In my opinion at least.

People think I'm a brilliant photographer but I'm just as good as any other. I used to joke that I was a savant. I'm a good writer but it's just another talent that is part mimicry, part practice. I can also mimic an author's exact style of writing. That's why I love reading Neil Gaiman when I write.

Question: can you put on the accents at will? I sometimes can but not if I want it to be perfect. I used to get so drunk I'd become Welsh but when I just put it on it sounds horrible. But the singer of The Vines can put on accents at will.

Yeah, I do this too, as does my brother (he speaks something like 14 languages, I can't remember.) I speak only very bad Ecuadoran Spanish as my 2nd language, but I have the accent very well and think in bad spanish at work most of the time. Accents are just like timbre in music. If you can hear timbre, you can mimic accents. Same skill.

I taught myself how to play piano and compose, is that savantism? I'm not sure if I understand what it is exactly.

If it's not on a spectrum, that would imply that some sort of gap occurs in some ability, where some maximum level of ability can be reached, and then if you're above that point, you must be a certain level above. Otherwise, it would be a spectrum.

I can see how this could occur in certain savant abilities, but only very narrow ones. For example, savants who can do very complex calculations instantaneously, without thinking about it, are often able to do so because they do the calculations in the "wrong" part of the brain, such as the part of the brain associated with eye movement. The calculations associated with something as simple as being able to track an object with one's eyes easily surpass the capabilities of a calculator. So for someone with "normal" neurology, approaching this level of ability would be impossible without extensive training.

For more generalized tasks, the possibility of a gap becomes increasingly unlikely, and are almost guaranteed to occur on a spectrum. Additionally, I would think that even very narrow savant abilities caused by very specific abnormalities in neurology could be approached through extensive training of a normal neurology, the same way that people on the autistic spectrum can develop the "common" skills that they naturally lack.

dianthus, savantism is an absurd natural affinity for something, often to the detriment of other sensory thinking.

Like being extremely systematic/numerical, but barely verbal at all (Rain Man). You tell the person your birthday and they immediately tell you what day of the week it was without having to think about it.

A piano savant could be shown a piano for the first time, shown the notes the different keys play. Then be played a song on the radio. Then just play the song on the piano without any other instruction.

I guess I feel like savantism isn't a spectrum itself, but rather the extreme far point of the same spectrum.

Yeah, I think by definition it's something that's extreme and 'freakish,' in the sense that the person's ability in that one area is dramatically contrasted with their ability in essentially all other skills. I.e. "Rainman," "idiot savant."

Also, as savants become more 'functional'/normal they tend to lose their savant skill. So, I think it's the contrast that makes the definition.