Autistic savant

"Idiot savant" redirects here. For the MTV game show, see Idiot Savants (game show).

For other uses, see Savant.

An autistic savant (historically described as an idiot savant) is a person with both autism and savant syndrome. Savant syndrome describes a person having a developmental or mental handicap of some sort with extraordinary mental abilities not found in most people. This usually means (but not in all cases) a lower than average general intelligence (IQ) but very high narrow intelligence in one or more fields. Savant syndrome skills involve striking feats of memory and arithmetic calculation and sometimes include unusual abilities in art or music. Savant syndrome is sometimes abbreviated as "savantism", and individuals with the syndrome are often nicknamed savants. This can be a source of confusion since a savant can also mean a person of learning, especially one of great knowledge in a particular subject.

Abilities

Savant syndrome is usually recognized during early childhood as coincident with other developmental abnormalities; the plurality of cases occur in children with autism. Males with savant syndrome outnumber females by roughly 6:1—slightly higher than the disparity for autism spectrum disorders.

Most autistic savants have extensive mental abilities called splinter skills. Why autistic savants are capable of these astonishing feats is not quite clear. Some savants have obvious neurological abnormalities (such as the lack of corpus callosum in Kim Peek's brain). Many savants are known to have abnormalities in the left hemisphere of the brain.

There are only about 100 recognized prodigious savants in the world.

Famous autistic savants

• Alonzo Clemons, American clay sculptor.
• Tony DeBlois, blind American musician.
• Leslie Lemke, blind American musician.
• Jonathan Lerman, American artist.
• Thristan Mendoza, Filipino marimba prodigy.
• Derek Paravicini, blind British musician.
• Kim Peek, basis for the 1988 fictional film Rain Man, although diagnosis has changed.
• James Henry Pullen, gifted British carpenter.
• Matt Savage, U.S. autistic jazz prodigy.
• Henriett Seth-F., Hungarian autistic savant, poet, writer and artist.
• Daniel Tammet, British autistic savant.
• Stephen Wiltshire, British architectural artist.
• Richard Wawro, Scottish artist.

See also

• List of people on the autistic spectrum
• People speculated to have been autistic

Further reading

• Heaton P, Wallace GL (2004). "Annotation: The savant syndrome." Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry 45 (5): 899–911. PMID PMID 15225334 doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.t01-1-00284.x
• Pring L (2005). "Savant talent." Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology 47, 500–503. PMID 15991873
• O'Connor N, Cowan R, Samella K (2000). "Calendric Calculation and Intelligence." Intelligence 28, 31–48.
• Pearce JC (1992). Evolution's End: Claiming the Potential of Our Intelligence, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco.
• Snyder AW, Mulcahy E, Taylor JL, Mitchell DJ, Sachdev P, Gandevia SC (2003). "Savant-like skills exposed in normal people by suppressing the left fronto-temporal lobe". J. Integr. Neurosci. 2 (2): 149–58. doi:10.1142/S0219635203000287. PMID 15011267.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Snyder AW (2001) "Paradox of the savant mind." Nature 413, 251–252.
• Snyder AW, Mitchell DJ (1999). "Is integer arithmetic fundamental to mental processing?: the mind's secret arithmetic". Proc. Biol. Sci. 266 (1419): 587–92. doi:10.1098/rspb.1999.0676. PMID 10212449.
• Tammet Daniel (2006). Born On A Blue Day, Hodder & Stoughton, London.
• Treffert DA (2000). Extraordinary People, Bantom Press, London.
• Treffert DA (1988). "The idiot savant: a review of the syndrome". The American journal of psychiatry. 145 (5): 563–72. PMID 3282450.

External links

• Wisconsin Medical Society: Savant Syndrome