The savant syndrome: an extraordinary condition. A synopsis: past, present, future

Abstract

Savant syndrome is a rare, but extraordinary, condition in which persons with serious mental disabilities, including autistic disorder, have some ‘island of genius’ which stands in marked, incongruous contrast to overall handicap. As many as one in 10 persons with autistic disorder have such remarkable abilities in varying degrees, although savant syndrome occurs in other developmental disabilities or in other types of central nervous system injury or disease as well. Whatever the particular savant skill, it is always linked to massive memory. This paper presents a brief review of the phenomenology of savant skills, the history of the concept and implications for education and future research.

What aspects of autism predispose to talent?

“…Special skills, such as lightning multiplication, identification of prime numbers, calendar calculation, perfect-perspective drawing, absolute pitch, instant reproduction of newly heard music and extraordinary memory for facts, are far more common in autism spectrum conditions (ASC: autism, Asperger's syndrome, atypical autism or PDD-NOS) than in any other group examined to date (see Treffert 2009). While robust epidemiological data are lacking, estimates from surveys of parents and carers (Rimland 1978) suggest that around one in 10 individuals with ASC have a talent out of line with their other abilities (but see Howlin et al (2009), for an even higher estimate), compared with perhaps 0.6-0.1 per cent among those with other developmental or intellectual disabilities (Hill 1977;Saloviita et al 2000).…”

Review paper. Does genius border on insanity? Part I: A relationship between creativity and the presence of psychopathological symptoms in bipolar disorder

“…Research of Hasselton and Miller (2002) confirms that women in the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle are more likely to enter into a relationship with a partner of low economic status, endowed with artistic talent, than with a rich partner, but devoid of similar ability [13]. The works of Buss et al [14] show that a sense of humor, which also has to do with creativity, is a strong asset in the selection of potential partners.…”

“…Badania Millera i Hasselton (2002) pokazują, że kobiety w fazie płodnej cyklu menstruacyjnego są bardziej skłonne do wejścia w relację z partnerem o niskim statusie ekonomicznym, ale obdarzonym talentem artystycznym, niż z partnerem bogatym, ale pozbawionym podobnych zdolności [13]. Z prac Bussa i wsp.…”

A Note on Chances and Limitations of Psychometric AI

“…But even when taking the entirety of available psychometric tests available at a specific point in time (as proposed by gPAI) and having a system succeed on them, we still would only be dealing with placeholders and parts without any guarantee at all that an immediate measure of "human intelligence" would implicitly or explicitly have emerged from within the collection of different tests (leaving . In a way similar to the case of a person suffering from the savant syndrome [8], when an AI should exceed human performance on all available psychometric means of assessment of intelligence or other high-level mental abilities, all we would know for sure is that the system performs better on the tested correlated tasks -but nothing would be revealed about whether the system is "truly intelligent" in the general way typically developing humans are deemed to be.…”