I was just reading about the movie "Mozart and the Whale", and how the idea of people on the autistic spectrum having savant skills is a stereotype.

I don't have any skills that I would really call savant.

I used to do the mental arithmetic thing. I could multiply any 3 digit number by any 2 digit number with no apparent hesitation - most people would give me easy numbers, thinking they could catch me out by using the biggest numbers they could, like "99 * 959", when 9s are the 2nd easiest digit to work with (after 1, of course). I could also divide any number up to 10,000 by any single digit number without apparent hesitation, out to as many decimal places as anyone wanted. That is where "142857" comes in, it is a circular sequence of numbers that makes any division by 7 possible out to as many decimal places as you want. Someone accused me of using a trick because I couldn't give accurate decimals for division by 7, so I sat down with a pen and paper and worked out the pattern.

I used to also tell people to give me any popular song that I would have heard in the past 10 or 20 years, and I would write out the words off the top of my head. I wasn't always 100% right. I am good at rote learning, memorising pages of text or sequences of numbers. Nothing spectacular though.

In terms of my family, my maternal grandfather was a musical savant. It was his side of the family where the autism genes obviously came from, although I don't know if he was autistic. He taught himself to read music as a small child, when he would turn the pages of sheet music for his Aunt when she played the piano at the old silent movies.

Nobody realized that he could read music until they saw him sat at the piano one day sight reading some sheet music and playing. He was discovered playing violin at a bush dance in North Queensland by an agent when he was a teenager, and he was a full-time professional musician his whole life after that, into his 70s. The photo albums from the world tours he went on in the 1920s caused my 2 uncles on that side to never speak to each other again, after a dispute over who had the right to inherit them.

He changed instruments several times through his career, and each time he would have lessons for 2 weeks to get the technique right and then simply turn up for band/orchestra rehearsals and play. He was usually acknowledged as the best practitioner in Australia at whatever instrument he was specialising in at the time.

Certainly not.  I only remember things if I want to.  And other than that, I have a TERRIBLE memory.

This post was last modified: 12-29-2010 08:42 AM by tintinophile691.

Your ability to recall words to songs accurately - is it like echolalia?  

I can recite entire movies verbatim, but I'd hardly call that a savant skill, most people have told me its annoying.  

I did know a girl in college who had a bizarre savant skill.  You could give her a date, and she'd tell you the day of the week, who she saw, and what they were wearing with great accuracy.  I don't know how far back she could go, at least a few months.

I think Echolalia has more to do with a person trying to get a grasp on how to effectively communicate or echoing (repeat) what is said to that person according to my mom I used to do this continuously when my mom was told that I would never ever speak and in fact echolaling was how I learned to talk... quite beneficial I must say

This post was last modified: 12-29-2010 05:46 PM by Greginjersey.

I can't say that I have truly savant skills but I am known in my family not only for my ability to remember dates; but my ability to figure out the day of the week a certain event occured.

I can determine such days of the week going back to 1753; the first year the modern calendar as we know it was being employed.  (1752 was a long year to catch to correct for cumulative errors in alignment with the seasons; I should study more about it.)  I can do this by using Dominical Letters (A through G; one letter for each regular year; 2 for leap years) and Solar Cycles (28 year cycles; has nothing to do with sun spot cycles; don't know why they're called solar cycles.)

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on a Friday.  The (U.S.) Declaration of Independence was signed on a Thursday.  Delaware was the first (U.S.) state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on Friday, December 7, 1787 (Dominical Letter = G) ; 154 years before the attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941 (Dominical Letter = E).

None except maybe my amazing ability to suck at everything.

I am very artistic. I need to draw and sculpt more.

I have a talent for improvising harmony lines, but you can't really call it a savant skill--I come from a musical family and nine years old isn't very young to start.

Depression makes me do nothing.

No. I'm pretty useless, actually. I don't even have normal skills.

You have an eye for fashion and artistic ability with makeup. There are really nice paying jobs where a person gets $12,000.00 a month dressing celebrities in L.A.  Idk if they have that in the uk butt you could make a killing dressing clueless chavette celebrities.

When I was diagnosed, I learned not only about what Aspergers is, but how it differs from so-called "classic" autism, and also that there are skills that some of us present, not as obvious as savantism, but what the doctor called "splinter savantism".  Which is that in some of us, although not all, our brain super-specializes in a certain area, typically in either art, or words, or memory, or maths.  

I remember saying in my naivety, that if you're interested in something, then of course you're going to work at it and improve.  But the doctor got quite thoughtful at this point, and told me that yes that's true, but that he'd had twenty years working with Aspies, and there was something we had, some little quirk of brain chemistry or whatever, that let us do things which were not explained by simply dedicated interest and working at it.  

By this time I was intrigued and he got out the IQ test I'd done when I was diagnosed.  He said that in his opinion my "splinter savantism" is hyperlexia.  My math sux, but my reading, writing, and comprehensive ability was right off the scale, apparently.

Since then, I've looked out, not only for Aspie children in my class, but also for what they obsess over, and looked at case studies of aspies.  My daughter is a terrific artist, she can capture just about anything, any pose, any expression, with not *accuracy* exactly, she just seems to capture it's essence and  render it more beautiful.  Which is why I was surprised when she very pragmatically decided to study science.  

And then there's "mathletes" and engineers, doctors and scientists, computer wizards and physicists, hyperlexics (ahem!) and artists.  It's almost as if those of us with splinter savantism are becoming a race of humans who super-specialize, each in our own field while retaining enough skills to manage in the outside world (however clumsily!), which the pure Savants cannot.  

Specialisation in nature is not generally a good thing as the animal goes extinct if it cannot change to meet changing environments, but in us super-specialisation seems to be spread out through the Aspie population, different nodalities of specialisation occuring.  Plus it seems to me from reading these posts that a lot of us are saying that we have no "savant skills" as such; but then going on to show how we have certain abilities that are what my doctor called splinter savant skills.  

I'm really excited about this time in human history, when there are more and more of us being born (or diagnosed).  I'd even venture to say that there are some of us who super-specialise in social conditions: and this is so prevalent in the general population that we call them Neurotypicals!

Vive la difference!

Alison

This post was last modified: 12-30-2010 01:39 AM by Alison.

Wonderful insight, Alison!  

I had a string of talents when I was younger, including above average artistic and musical ability, but i definitely excel best at writing/reading.  I am definitely hyperlexic, I learned to read at 3 and always read many grade levels ahead.  I would turn in assignments, and my teachers would insist it wasn't my work, but It always was.  I was in a regular english class in high school, and my teacher insisted she pull me out and put me in the AP class that was a year ahead.  I got a perfect score on the AP test.  I write poetry, but it is usually very freestyle and personal, I don't share it.  

Hmm, I'm gonna have to chew on that.  Maybe I need to take that into consideration for long term career goals.

Good point about the musical ability: I meant to add that in my list of specialisations but somehow omitted to put it in.  Also language would be another one.

Splinter savantism I find a fascinating concept, as you can probably tell.  And unlike the "pure" savantism, it is hugely useful to be able to perservate for years at a time and become a total expert at one thing, while still retaining enough ability that you can earn a living at it and survive without needing huge amounts of help or accommodation in day-to-day life, as some savants need.

Think Charles Darwin, spending fourteen years studying barnacles!  

Alison (back to studying Kanji -  月曜日、火曜日、水曜日… )

This post was last modified: 12-30-2010 04:05 AM by Alison.

I'm only good at one thing, electronics.

I stink at anything else.