What is a savant ability?

[Guest guest]

I have been meaning to ask this question...how does one know whether something

is a savant ability, or just a talent?

I know there is a difference. Of course, an " idiot savant " is a person that is

very good at one skill but nothing else. But I have met many people that stated

they had a " savant ability " or multiple " savant abilities, " and I was wondering,

what qualifies something as being a savant ability?

I have a thought. I'm reminded of the " intervention vs. development " concept

and I am looking at a parallel " savant ability vs. talent " concept; not all

talents autistic people have are savant abilities! Just as not all development

is the result of an intervention.

I have read that when a spectrum person tries to be more social, the savant

abilitiy/abilities they have become weaker. Having experienced a loss of one of

my talents during elevated levels of social interaction, I think I have an

ability that may be a savant ability.

My guess is that a savant ability is one that comes naturally, in which the

individual needs no training. My guess, also, is that a savant ability is often

substancially above an individual's other abilities. But I am just not sure.

Which is why I am asking.

I have several talents. I am good at acting, I am good at art (though I can't

draw or sketch; I can only paint and sculpt). I am a good pianist and I am a

good writer. I can maintain all these abilities regardless of how social I am.

But I also write music. I've been making up songs since before I could talk. I

taught myself to play a keyboarded instrument when I was about 3, and as soon as

my family bought a piano when I was 7 I started being able to play my sister's

lessons by ear (it never occured to me to look at her books) and within weeks I

was able to play the piano by ear fairly accurately. This was several years

after the small electric organ broke, leaving me with no instrument except

voice.

I can be cleaning my apartment or walking my dog or reading or anything and

suddenly a song that I've never heard before will get into my head. I then feel

the need to rush to a piano and play this song (easily, by ear). The only hard

part is writing it down, but I've invented a system for rapid transcription. I

can quickly write down some appropriate accompanyment and within a few minutes,

I'll have written a new song. I can also take a poem someone else wrote and

write music for it in a few minutes, and I can just sit at the piano and my

fingers will write something new. I sometimes capture the music my mind and

hands compose so effortlessly, and sometimes I do not. I express emotion

through my music and I've discovered that when I watch films, I use the music

rather than the nonverbal communication the actors are using to figure out the

emotions. When the music is wrong, it's a bad movie, but so long as the music

is right, it is a good movie, no matter how " bad " it is.

Writing music to be comes completely naturally and effortlessly...writing DOWN

music in my own technique is at least somewhat inefficient although not always

fast enough and sometimes I lose part of a song before I can transcribe

it...even though I read music quite well, I lack an internal metronome and

perfect pitch and have a terrible time transcribing my compositions into sheet

music. Even with software for that purpose I have a terrible time with it. But

the actual invention of new music, and the ability to play that music on a

keyboarded instrument, is completely effortless for me. When I am more social,

it is an ability I lack entirely. For example, when I was in my first

relationship, I was only able to write one song during the entire duration of

the relationship (3 months) because I was being much more social than usual.

During the week that we were broken up during this time period, I was able to

write dozens and dozens of songs. It is not simply that I lacked the

angst needed to write music, or something like that. I can write music while

in a relationship if I do not need to be social.

So...how can I tell if I have a savant ability or if it's just a talent? And,

for that matter, are my artistic abilities also savant abilities? How can I

paint something or sculpt something if I cannot sketch it? That baffled all my

art teachers. I would ask, " Can I please just not do the sketch? I know

exactly what I want to do, but I can't draw it. " After this had happened a few

times, my teachers were willing to just let me go right to the finished product

and skip their fruitless attempts to have me do a sketch first. (Sketches were

not part of the grade but they prevented the wasting of materials so sketching

was standard).

If neither of these is a savant ability, then what is an savant ability?

[Guest guest]

nah,

I know this is not directly related to what you're talking about, but I

would like to know your method for writing down music. I've had no success

trying to learn standard musical notation. I write ragtime (and have a piece

posted in the Files area) and figure it might help immensely. I'm often in

the same fix you're in, with a beautiful melody in my head that is lost

forever once I go to my computer (I use Finale Notepad).

I've noticed that as some of my more obviously autistic quirks have faded

over time (the rocking, for example) some of my abilities have also. I

haven't been able to create a cartoon, or come up with a single idea for a

cartoon, in nearly a decade. I wonder if what's happening to both of us is

related somehow.

> I have read that when a spectrum person tries to be more social, the

savant abilitiy/abilities they have become weaker. Having experienced a

loss of one of my talents during elevated levels of social interaction, I

think I have an ability that may be a savant ability.

>

[Guest guest]

Here is a good site that not only offers a definition of Savant Syndrome, but

also explains it in some detail:

http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/faq.cfm

BTW, the terms " idiot " and " idiot savant " are not only hopelessly out of date,

but also politically incorrect and inaccurate to boot. Using such labels shows

a gross misunderstanding of the whole concept of intelligence.

The concept of multiple intelligences is well established and the classic IQ

tests focus on only two or three.

Colin

(Who also screwed up school IQ tests, became bored and realised that the IBM

cards were two-sided, and thus, when punched, only one correct answer per

question meant that the other side was already determined.)

Quoting Newstead :

> nah,

>

> I know this is not directly related to what you're talking about, but I

> would like to know your method for writing down music. I've had no success

> trying to learn standard musical notation. I write ragtime (and have a

> piece

> posted in the Files area) and figure it might help immensely. I'm often in

> the same fix you're in, with a beautiful melody in my head that is lost

> forever once I go to my computer (I use Finale Notepad).

>

> I've noticed that as some of my more obviously autistic quirks have faded

> over time (the rocking, for example) some of my abilities have also. I

> haven't been able to create a cartoon, or come up with a single idea for a

> cartoon, in nearly a decade. I wonder if what's happening to both of us is

> related somehow.

>

>

> > I have read that when a spectrum person tries to be more social, the

> savant abilitiy/abilities they have become weaker. Having experienced a

> loss of one of my talents during elevated levels of social interaction, I

> think I have an ability that may be a savant ability.

> >

>

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

I am making myself a note to reply to this tomorrow. I will take a photo of my

method and scan it in and add an explanation but it will take a while and I need

to get offline right now and probably won't have time to come back to it. If I

haven't replied in 2 days send me a message to remind me I was supposed to

because if I haven't got to it by then I've forgotten what the reminder means.

Newstead wrote:nah,

I know this is not directly related to what you're talking about, but I

would like to know your method for writing down music. I've had no success

trying to learn standard musical notation. I write ragtime (and have a piece

posted in the Files area) and figure it might help immensely. I'm often in

the same fix you're in, with a beautiful melody in my head that is lost

forever once I go to my computer (I use Finale Notepad).

I've noticed that as some of my more obviously autistic quirks have faded

over time (the rocking, for example) some of my abilities have also. I

haven't been able to create a cartoon, or come up with a single idea for a

cartoon, in nearly a decade. I wonder if what's happening to both of us is

related somehow.

> I have read that when a spectrum person tries to be more social, the

savant abilitiy/abilities they have become weaker. Having experienced a

loss of one of my talents during elevated levels of social interaction, I

think I have an ability that may be a savant ability.

>

[Guest guest]

I knew the term idiot savant seemed outdated to me but not knowing the

contemporary term I used it anyway. I saw a news program about " idiot savants "

when I was a child and when I first saw the word " savant " as an adult I had no

idea what it meant because I expected the word to be something like

" Idiasuffant " because I didn't know the first part was actually " idiot. " I take

it the term is supposed to mean " mentally retarded person incapable of self-care

that has a single or a small cluster of savant abilities " since the old meaning

of idiot now means a person with very low IQ. I should learn to apologize for my

use of outdated terms in advance but in the mid-80s when I learned about the

phenomenon, that was still what they called it, at least in the news. To give

you some perspective about when this was in my life and in history, I think it

was in the news because Rain Man had recently premiered (at least that would

make sense because they mentioned the film in the report) and I

was born in 1979 so I was in elementary school at the time this aired. I

remember that Norma Rashid was the narrator and that, therefore, it was on NBC,

and may have been a local program rather than on national news because she was a

local television anchor, along with Jerry Springer (back before he had his own

talk show he actually had rather good nightly commentaries) and someone else who

I cannot recall because he was the sports caster so I did not care.

I appreciate the information. I will have to check out that web site.

Colin Wessels wrote:

Here is a good site that not only offers a definition of Savant Syndrome, but

also explains it in some detail:

http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/faq.cfm

BTW, the terms " idiot " and " idiot savant " are not only hopelessly out of date,

but also politically incorrect and inaccurate to boot. Using such labels shows

a gross misunderstanding of the whole concept of intelligence.

The concept of multiple intelligences is well established and the classic IQ

tests focus on only two or three.

Colin

(Who also screwed up school IQ tests, became bored and realised that the IBM

cards were two-sided, and thus, when punched, only one correct answer per

question meant that the other side was already determined.)

[Guest guest]

Subject: Re: What is a savant ability?

nah,

I know this is not directly related to what you're talking about, but I

would like to know your method for writing down music. I've had no success

trying to learn standard musical notation. I write ragtime (and have a piece

posted in the Files area) and figure it might help immensely. I'm often in

the same fix you're in, with a beautiful melody in my head that is lost

forever once I go to my computer (I use Finale Notepad).

I've noticed that as some of my more obviously autistic quirks have faded

over time (the rocking, for example) some of my abilities have also. I

haven't been able to create a cartoon, or come up with a single idea for a

cartoon, in nearly a decade. I wonder if what's happening to both of us is

related somehow.

> I have read that when a spectrum person tries to be more social, the

savant abilitiy/abilities they have become weaker. Having experienced a

loss of one of my talents during elevated levels of social interaction, I

think I have an ability that may be a savant ability.

>

i stopped creative writing when depression went. i was never a savant though,

just some splinter abilities. a savant has an ability developed to

extraordinary capabilities at the expense of others. out of respect to savants,

i would not like to see that term watered down to include talents.

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[Guest guest]

Musical notation takes too long. Much too long to be useful. I am a former

Finale Notepad user but now a Finale user. My husband was a music

theory/composition major for 5 years and he luckily bought Finale when he was in

college, but the only real advantages to that are the ability to strike a note

on a keyboard instead of having to punch it in, and being able to write longer

songs without breaking them up into multiple songs.

I invented this method for writing music rather spontaneously and I've refined

it a little over the years. The advantage is that it's rather fast, but the

disadvantage is that you really have to have a good memory or be quick to come

up with words (even if they are entirely meaningless). And, depending on how

you write, it may or may not be useful.

The big priority is getting the actual notes down. I can sit at the piano and

play whatever is in my head by ear, sometimes with a few mistakes but generally

what I want it to sound like. As I play the melody, I think of words that will

reflect the lengths of the notes. This is really hard to explain. The words

are basically discarded once I have the song memorized. But I have learned the

hard way that I must have the words written down with the song because otherwise

I might not play it for a while and then I'll find the song and I'll be like, " I

have no idea what this is supposed to sound like. I can't figure it out at

all. " Sometimes I end up figuring it out. Of course you know how different

2-eights quarter half note quarter sounds from quarter quarter half note dot

quarter eighth. Yet if I just write down notes I don't know how to play them

because I do not know their value. So if I were to write, for instance, ABCDE,

I have no idea what that sounds like if I do not

know how long to hold the notes. I use the words to remind me of how long to

hold each note. Think about a song you know that has words. You could play the

song without the words because you know how long to hold each note because you

know the words. In my case, I can use the words, " I am waiting for the traffic

light to change, " and these words will not have anything to do with the song but

everything to do with how long to hold the notes. I am waiting for the traffic

light to change...I'd consider that as eigthth, eigthth, eighth, eighth, eighth,

eighth, quarter, eighth, half note. The notes I hear are

D E F# G F# E F# D E

I would have no idea how this sounded, if I wrote just this snipplet down, just

this line of notes, capital letters and sharp or flat signs, unless I had some

way to know how long to hold each note before proceeding. That is why I use the

words.

Now, for accompanyment, I would play through this melody and automatically I'd

be able to figure out what notes would work with these and I'd end up writing

out

D E F# G F# E F# D E

D B A

Other chords could certainly work, and the accompanyment has yet to be added,

but through this basic formula, I can go back later and play what I wrote:

I am wait-ing for the light to change

D E F# G F# E F# D E

D B A

(next line here)

It's not perfect, but it's much quicker than traditional music notation, at

least for me. The same thing in music notation that I get out of this much

simpler format is the same as this melody:

http://www.beseeingyou.net/anon/pics/snipofmusic.jpg

Maybe this method will not work for you at all. I have never tried to explain

it before so I am not sure if it came across well or not. This is something so

basic to my life...it's like trying to explain how to walk. It's not as

automatic as digesting food or something but I have done it so long that I don't

know how to explain how it's done. I have noted that if I fail to write the

accompanyment down or if I fail to write down the words, I often regret it. So

I keep doing that. Also, it's important to sometimes include arrows. If you

put " C G A " it will seem obvious to go from middle C to the G above it to the A

above that G, when you may actually mean to go from middle C to the G below

middle C and then to the A above middle C. In which case you need an arrow or

the word " low " for the G and an arrow or the word " High " for A or else you may

forget and then not recognize the song later when you try to play it. I just

use " Hi " and " Lo " for these because they're shorter, or

arrows. I generally just memorize my accompanyment so I don't need to write it

down unless there is something unusual about it that I want to make sure not to

forget. Multiple notes played at once are easy to add, for example if I have my

example of C G A but I want to add more to it I'd do it this way...it would be:

CG(lo)A(hi)

C F

But say I wanted to add some harmony notes in, it would look like this:

E F

CG(lo)A(hi)

C F

If the E is supposed to be below the C and the F is supposed to be above the A I

can use arrows or hi and lo but I will keep the melody note in the melody line

because otherwise I might not be able to play it properly later, or else I'll

use a symbol that means " chord " above the melody note and then write a chord off

to the side, such as

B

A

Eb

B

Let me know if this made sense! I can take a picture of my writen-out version

if that would make more sense, but I questioned whether or not I'd need to since

I can type it just as easily.

Newstead wrote:

nah,

I know this is not directly related to what you're talking about, but I

would like to know your method for writing down music. I've had no success

trying to learn standard musical notation. I write ragtime (and have a piece

posted in the Files area) and figure it might help immensely. I'm often in

the same fix you're in, with a beautiful melody in my head that is lost

forever once I go to my computer (I use Finale Notepad).

I've noticed that as some of my more obviously autistic quirks have faded

over time (the rocking, for example) some of my abilities have also. I

haven't been able to create a cartoon, or come up with a single idea for a

cartoon, in nearly a decade. I wonder if what's happening to both of us is

related somehow.

> I have read that when a spectrum person tries to be more social, the

savant abilitiy/abilities they have become weaker. Having experienced a

loss of one of my talents during elevated levels of social interaction, I

think I have an ability that may be a savant ability.

>