Research study on savantism in ASD

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This is an interesting read I think:

http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1072/1251

I think that savantism is primarily specialization. The whole brain gets into an efficient configuration for a specific class of problem. Notice how often athletes use "body english" which non-functional and musicians dance as much as possible as they play, vastly complicating keyboard work. These are physical evidence of the body's control circuits being pressed into service as memory registers and timers. Savants can do that without having to wiggle.

Another big factor here is honesty. Having found the world such a confusing place, I didn't think ordinary people would further confuse the issue with lies. This is a social handicap that affects employment, since a lot of bonding involves the mutual keeping of secrets, from stealing pens and hours from employers to hiding big mistakes and romantic adventures.

Having fewer human relationships, the Aspie has better odds of really getting to know nature. Unfortunately, most people spend most of their time carefully checking one theory, and are not really able to carefully consider a competing view, let alone take delight in the discovery. University professors keep teaching what they believe until they retire, it takes a new generation to agree on something like plate tectonics. Not belonging to a herd, Aspie can keep looking at the evidence, and has better odds of ignoring a whole school that is missing something basic.

I contest the term "splinter skills" and the way it is used by "experts in savant studies" to minimise and "downgrade" prodigious AS talent, typically expressed as "it is important to remember that these splinter skills are part of their overall disability".

Please read this comparison piece, which raves about prodigious NT talent, and notice the different framing put around the skills:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/be ... e-prodigy/

Autistic success in any field, savant or not, is far more likely to be trivialised, discounted or ignored. It's part of a bigger context of dehumanisation with which we are all familiar.

Skills are skills. In NTs they are framed as talent. In AS savants they are framed as disability, possible brain damage, intellectual handicap.

FFS, I am over this double talk crap, and I don't care how many degrees Treffert et al have after their names. (We here have quite a few too).

Savants sure are an endlessly fascinating category of Autism aren't they? I have genuine awe and respect for their abilities but they are probably the ones nefarious people would seek to take advantage of the most. They are the most vulnerable of all of us. I had a 1 in 3 chance of getting Savantism or Classic, and I ended up with Asperger's. Does that make me lucky? Should I count my blessings?

I have pondered those questions at great length...

_________________
*** High Functioning Autism - Asperger's Syndrome ***

ADHD, OCD, and PTSD.

Keep calm and stim away.

Here are some ideas about savantism on the spectrum I suspect may have validity:

1. I suspect that most ASD high functioning savants generally don't disclose at all (except anonymously in venues like this, and most don't even in venues like this) because they don't want to be "enfreaked" (or discounted.. the discounts I have seen in the past on WP are in the manner of 'well I don't have savant skills so I don't believe they exist', "unless an expert says you are a savant then you aren't a savant". I hope this discussion doesn't degenerate into that).

2. I suspect that the rate of savant skills on the spectrum are not only much higher than in the NT population (which is known already) but much higher on the spectrum than generally thought.

3. I suspect that the male to female ratio quoted by the NT experts is wrong, for various reasons, just as the male to female ratio of ASD is wrong, for various reasons.

4. I suspect that the male and female savants have the same kinds of talents and there is no gender difference.

5. I suspect sampling bias of various kinds and other methodological bias has corrupted the conclusions that the current and past "experts" have made, and that few of their findings are reliable and valid. If there is a bell curve of savantism (say) then they have been looking at one tail, a situation analogous to the instructive tale of the 3 blind men who describe the elephant, by holding different parts like its tail, and come to blows. None of them have an accurate perception, all think that they do.

6. The NT experts (hereafter referred to as "NTE's") seem to theorise from the unproven and unchallenged assumption that savantism is in the "hardware" brain, missing alternative possibilities altogether. It might be a software issue, a particular function of the mind, or there may be both hardware savants and software savants. That there are different types seems obvious to me, though the NTE's have generally tried to impose one size fits all theories. As with autism generally, they are missing the heterogenous nature of savantism. Even more so missing it though in terms of savantism.

7. NTE observers have ignored within group difference - eg some savants have single savant abilities and others multiple savant abilities. I suspect this difference between single and multiple talent is a very important ignored variable.

9. Savantism, when not being enfreaked by the NTEs, is framed in other dismissive terms like "one trick ponies". (One trick ponies are trained to be one trick ponies, savants are human beings with specific talents that don't arise from training). The language of savantism as discussed by NTEs is a discourse of disability and they are entrapped by that narrowness of thought and conceptualisation.

10. Attempts to impose empiricism by the NTEs on their preconceptions have resulted in non-scientific, reductionist and circular explanations, lacking authenticity. The NTEs have for the most part seemed like old time ethnologists who once studied "savages" in a different cultures, oblivious to their biased presumptions arising from their own cultural socialisation.

11. The "enfreakment" discourse has created the popular impression that savants are always "on", there is no off switch, or no other mode that they can function in. Possibly this is the biggest myth of all that they have offered the public, and it has IMO done a lot of damage to the search for reality.

12. It is assumed that, other than rare cases which resulted from head injury in life, there must be only one single cause of savantism. There many be multiple causes, though possibility is ignored. There may or may not be very significant differences between NT and AS savants. However the attempts to make one size fit all continues without challenge.

13. The myth of "savants are usually intellectually handicapped" is continually promoted and there are a lot of issues with this that will be obvious to us, if not to the NTEs.

14. There are many completely unasked and unexplored issues. For example, what is the impact of alcohol or other substances on savant function? What environmental factors diminish or enhance savant functioning in savants?

15. Academic experimental psychology can't get the right answers from asking the wrong questions - a dictum proposed by Einstein (I think) and one that perhaps should be engraved on the doors of all scientific establishments...

16. Completely absent from all the NTE studies I have read is any mention of savants in academia. Obviously they exist, as some of us are contributing to this thread. This has obvious implications for the skewed conclusions of the NTE studies. But it's not obvious to the NTE experimenters, and given their core bias of savantism as disability, the supposition or acknowledgment of academic savants - people operating as peers on the NTEs own academic level - would pose a severe challenge to their narratives, and perhaps to their egos as well. We know why AS people in academia stay in the closet, and we can speculate fairly safely I think that the AS academic savants stay in the savant closet for the same reasons. The link below clearly illustrates what kinds of denigrating interpretations that academic savants would be tarred and feathered with.

PS: The possibility of the substance effect issue is particularly interesting to me because in my 40s, I used alcohol to cope during very challenging circumstances - deaths and tragedy affecting those adults who were closest to me. Whether this was part of the reason that my savant capability diminished at that time is a possibility though there is no way of knowing whether the impact of multiple tragedies itself was enough to cause that shift, or age, or something else, or a combination of factors.

More comment on the enfreakment of savants here:
http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/3407/3640

I agree. There are many facets to this issue that have not been addressed.

After hours of literature search, I managed to find only one article that didn't distort "gifted" and "autism" as binary opposites, which were mutually exclusive. The rest (many) simply and simplistically imposed the binary opposite, dictated by the medical model of autism as disability.

Here is the one single article that acknowledges the congruence of giftedness and autism:
http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/10/w ... in-common/

The only discourse paper I could find was lengthy and for the most part a ponderous (though accurate) explanation of Foucault's discourse theory. However this New Zealand paper - which is over 200 pages - focused on what the impact is of being a gifted/Aspergers person who is continuously confronted by the stereotypes fashioned by the medical model of autism, and the researcher actually involved gifted aspies as subjects; this seems to have not happened in any previous study (to my amazement). I suggest that unless you are overwhelmingly interested in the complexities and methodological issues of post-modern research, start reading at about page 200. Also be warned that between each chapter there are blank pages you have to scroll down past. Despite all that, I think it is worth the considerable effort on account of the rarity of the recognition that aspie and giftedness are not binary opposites..

http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/xmlui/ ... sequence=6

You make me wish I had savant abilities.

I wonder what good I could have done had I had them.

Of course, I'm feeling sorry for myself LOL

I surmise that there may be kinds of savantism that is and has been completely unrecognised, even perhaps by those who had or have it, and if that is correct, I envy them.

For example, Nicola Tesla may have been a "science" savant, in that theories just came to him, spontaneously. He certainly achieved things that were good for others. I have no doubt that he was also on the spectrum, and if he was a savant, it was in a way that was off the scale.

I guess we all envy something we don't have, lol.
...

Here is an account of the 7 year old Tesla, solving a problem in his town, by a theory "which just came to me":
About a year after the family moved to Gospic a new fire company was organized. It was to be supplied with a pump which would replace the useful but inadequate bucket brigade. The members of the new organization obtained brightly colored uniforms and practiced marching for parades. Eventually the new pump arrived. It was a man-power pump to be operated by sixteen men. A parade and demonstration of the new apparatus was arranged. Almost everyone in Gospic turned out for the event and followed to the river front for the pump demonstration. Tesla was among them. He paid no attention to the speeches but was all eyes for the brightly painted apparatus. He did not know how it worked but would have loved to take it apart and investigate the insides.

The time for the demonstration came when the last speaker, finishing his dedicatory address, gave the order to start the pumping operation that would send a stream of water shooting skyward from the nozzle. The eight men regimented on either side of the pump bowed and rose in alternate unison as they raised and lowered the bars that operated the pistons of the pump. But nothing else happened, not a drop of water came from the nozzle!

Officials of the fire company started feverishly to make adjustments and, after each attempt, set the sixteen men oscillating up and down at the pump handles, but each time without results. The lines of hose between the pump and the nozzle were straightened out, they were disconnected from the pump and connected again. But no water came from the far end of the hose to reward the efforts of the perspiring firemen.

Tesla was among the usual group of urchins that always manages to get inside the lines on such occasions. He tried to see everything that was going on from the closest possible vantage point and undoubtedly got on the nerves of the vexed officials when their repeated efforts were frustrated by continuous failures. As one of the officials turned for the tenth time to vent his frustration on the urchins and order them away from his range of action, Tesla grabbed him by the arm.

"I know what to do, Mister,'' said Tesla. "You keep pumping.''

Dashing for the river, Tesla peeled his clothes off quickly and dove into the water. He swam to the suction hose that was supposed to draw the water supply from the river. He found it kinked, so that no water could flow into it, and flattened by the vacuum created by the pumping. When he straightened out the kink, the water rushed into the line. The nozzlemen had stood at their post for a long time, receiving a continuous repetition of warnings to be prepared each time an adjustment was made, but, as nothing happened on these successive occasions, they had gradually relaxed their attention and were giving little thought to the direction in which the nozzle was pointed. When the stream of water did shoot skyward, down it came on the assembled officials and townspeople. This item of unexpected drama excited the crowd at the other end of the line near the pump, and to give vent to their joy they seized the scantily dressed Tesla, boosted him to the shoulders of a couple of the firemen, and led a procession around the town. The seven-year-old Tesla was the hero of the day.

Later on Tesla, in explaining the incident, said that he had had not the faintest idea of how the pump worked; but as he watched the men struggle with it, he got an intuitive flash of knowledge that told him to go to the hose in the river. On looking back to that event, he said, he knew how Archimedes must have felt when, after discovering the law of the displacement of water by floating objects, he ran naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting "Eureka!

At the age of seven Tesla had tasted the pleasures of public acclaim.

...

He had many other savant capacities that are more "standard", like doing calculus in his head as a child. If my other surmise that there is a "Bell Curve" of savant ability, then I hazard a further guess that Tesla was in the top percentile. Those of us here are perhaps clustered at the peak in the middle, more "typical" types. Where would you put the "Rainmen" on that thereoretical distribution?

PS: Gauss is another possible candidate for scientific savantism, not just because he described what the Bell Curve is..

During the past few days as I have read hundreds of articles about savantism, I came across one or two brief and casual references to the ability to know the time, day or night.

I have this, though it never occurred to me that it could be related to savantism, and whether it is or not arouses my curiosity.

One aspect the tends to persuade me that it might be, drawn from my own experience, is that when I travel to different time zones/countries, there is a continuity of being able to know the time without any adjustment period. I first noticed this consciously during my trip to Australia last month, and puzzled over how that could happen at the time, in isolation.

Any others here who have experienced this?

I think savant skills can be modified (for better or worse) under certain conditions. One of Tesla's savant skills was the ability to build and test things visually in his mind before attempting to build them in real life. He could "see" where problems in a design might happen and then he could "fix" them at that stage of planning. That is an extreme version of visual thinking skills. He likely developed and honed them by thinking of things that peaked his curiosity as a child. If he was not as interested in thinking about those type of things, his visual thinking skills that he had would likely not have been used as much during his lifetime.

I once had the ability to "set my head" instead of an alarm clock, even for unusual schedules. Robert Fulghum tells about "Mean Gene, the Time Machine" who always knew the time, and could time an hour's passage to the minute.

I can do some of Tesla's "run a virtual machine mentally to test for wear." An undersize bearing and many other imbalances could be exposed, but usually, I'm just wondering if something is strong and stiff enough. When I was a lad, I had the job of feeding spaghetti into the boiling water as quickly as the wet end softened enough, so that it would not cook too unevenly. Sometimes, I broke a few. Ever since, I have built my mental test structures in half-cooked pasta instead of steel, etc. This simple trick makes it easy to see where it will bend and crack at much smaller strains in a stiffer material. Now that there is a supercomputer on every desk, FEA is more accurate, but far more tedious.

When I first read the brochure claims for the Air (powered) Car, I knew instantly that they contradicted the physics and math I learned in gr. 11. A few numbers on the back of an envelope confirmed it. Amazingly, it continued to defraud backers for about a decade. Even a decent author I know was taken in, trusting that others must have done the checking. It took an actual road test to convince him, even though I could show similar examples with known and predicted poor range.

People like you are a fly in the ointment of "the low intelligent savant" myth being disseminated (still) by the NTE's.

Well done you, Dear One, that's pretty damn impressive.

How can you tell an autistic person is a savant rather than really good at something? Do they have to be better than NT's who are good at something to be classed as a savant?

Savantism is more than being good at something, in that savant skills generally appear spontaneously and in unusual capacity without training or practice. For example, in memory, an NT or an autistic person can train themselves, using mnenomics and suchlike, to improve recall so that they have a very good memory system. The savant memory needs no training, it emerges in its full blown state. Not all savants are on the spectrum, though about 90% are.