Human Savants

By | February 14, 2005
1 Comment

The Guardian presents a fascinating look into the mind of the autistic savant:

Last year Tammet broke the European record for recalling pi, the mathematical constant, to the furthest decimal point. He found it easy, he says, because he didn’t even have to “think”. To him, pi isn’t an abstract set of digits; it’s a visual story, a film projected in front of his eyes. He learnt the number forwards and backwards and, last year, spent five hours recalling it in front of an adjudicator. He wanted to prove a point. “I memorised pi to 22,514 decimal places, and I am technically disabled. I just wanted to show people that disability needn’t get in the way.”

Daniel Tammet stands out from other autistic savants because of his ability to describe what’s going on inside his mind. Professor Allan Snyder of the Centre for the Mind at the Australian National University in Canberra theorizes that all human beings have the capacity to perform the kinds of mental feats associated with autistic savants. Savants are able to access these capabilities as a form of compensation for damage or malfunction elsewhere in the brain.

  • http://rationallongevity.blogspot.com/ AnneC

    One thing I think is essential in any discussion of autism is the acknowledgement that “autism” is not a set of behaviors or deficits, but a set of perceptual and cognitive extrema that are nevertheless part of the spectrum of human characteristics.

    There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about autistics and the autism spectrum — a lot of them very damaging, such as the idea that autistic people can never learn to communicate or that we are incapable of complex emotions.

    What I’ve found in my own experience and research is that autistic people simply lack an assumption set (pertaining to gestures, tone, and the significance of certain sorts of social reciprocity) that is shared with the typical person. One thing I really think medical science needs to look into seriously is the phenomenon of autistic people being able to communicate and socialize quite effectively with one another.