Identical Twin—"idiot Savants"—calendar Calculators

Horwitz, William A.; Kestenbaum, Clarice J.; Person, Ethel Spector; Jarvik, Lissy F.

doi:10.1176/ajp.121.11.1075

Cited by 115 publications

(40 citation statements)

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“…Although some savants, such as G.T., are able to provide conscious accounts of their abilities later in life (Bouvet et al, 2012), most are not able to verbalize their mapping strategies, both because their abilities generally emerge early in life when verbal skills are minimal and because some savants, including those whose savant ability involves verbal or numerical material (Horwitz et al, 1965), never develop speech. Thus, savants do not seem to use typical learning processes through explicit language-based strategies for their skills.…”

Section: Savant Abilities Involve Materials With a High Density Of Ismentioning

confidence: 99%

Veridical mapping in the development of exceptional autistic abilities

Mottron¹,

Bouvet²,

Bonnel³

et al. 2013

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

206

162

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Superior perception, peaks of ability, and savant skills are often observed in the autistic phenotype. The enhanced perceptual functioning model (Mottron et al., 2006a) emphasizes the increased role and autonomy of perceptual information processing in autistic cognition. Autistic abilities also involve enhanced pattern detection, which may develop through veridical mapping across isomorphic perceptual and non-perceptual structures (Mottron et al., 2009). In this paper, we elaborate veridical mapping as a specific mechanism which can explain the higher incidence of savant abilities, as well as other related phenomena, in autism. We contend that savant abilities such as hyperlexia, but also absolute pitch and synaesthesia, involve similar neurocognitive components, share the same structure and developmental course, and represent related ways by which the perceptual brain deals with objective structures under different conditions. Plausibly, these apparently different phenomena develop through a veridical mapping mechanism whereby perceptual information is coupled with homological data drawn from within or across isomorphic structures. The atypical neural connectivity characteristic of autism is consistent with a developmental predisposition to veridical mapping and the resulting high prevalence of savant abilities, absolute pitch, and synaesthesia in autism.

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Section: Savant Abilities Involve Materials With a High Density Of Ismentioning

confidence: 99%

Veridical mapping in the development of exceptional autistic abilities

Mottron¹,

Bouvet²,

Bonnel³

et al. 2013

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

206

162

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Horwitz et al 1965;Selfe 1977;Sacks 1995) orientation to and study of their materials of interest. In keeping with our proposal about how savants perceive and integrate patterns, materials that spontaneously attract interest may be at any scale or level within a structure, including those that appear unsuitable for the individual's apparent developmental level.…”

Section: Structure Emotion and Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced perception in savant syndrome: patterns, structure and creativity

Mottron

Dawson

Soulières

2009

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

190

135

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According to the enhanced perceptual functioning (EPF) model, autistic perception is characterized by: enhanced low-level operations; locally oriented processing as a default setting; greater activation of perceptual areas during a range of visuospatial, language, working memory or reasoning tasks; autonomy towards higher processes; and superior involvement in intelligence. EPF has been useful in accounting for autistic relative peaks of ability in the visual and auditory modalities. However, the role played by atypical perceptual mechanisms in the emergence and character of savant abilities remains underdeveloped. We now propose that enhanced detection of patterns, including similarity within and among patterns, is one of the mechanisms responsible for operations on human codes, a type of material with which savants show particular facility. This mechanism would favour an orientation towards material possessing the highest level of internal structure, through the implicit detection of within-and between-code isomorphisms. A second mechanism, related to but exceeding the existing concept of redintegration, involves completion, or filling-in, of missing information in memorized or perceived units or structures. In the context of autistics' enhanced perception, the nature and extent of these two mechanisms, and their possible contribution to the creativity evident in savant performance, are explored.

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“…Calendar calculation refers to the ability to rapidly supply the day of the week of a given date, with some savants able to perform calculations spanning thousands of years (e.g. Horwitz et al, 1965) or taking between 1.5 and 10 seconds to accurately identify the day of the week for dates such as 1 April 1850, 22 June 1979 or 15 December 1964 (Heavey, 1997).…”

Section: Number and Calendar Calculatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory characteristics in individuals with savant skills

Pring¹

2008

Memory in Autism

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Identical Twin—"idiot Savants"—calendar Calculators

Cited by 115 publications

References 0 publications

Veridical mapping in the development of exceptional autistic abilities

Veridical mapping in the development of exceptional autistic abilities

Enhanced perception in savant syndrome: patterns, structure and creativity

Memory characteristics in individuals with savant skills

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