Prodigies and autistics

[DogwoodTree]

Here's the link to the article:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/art...ookPost&utm_medium=FBPost&utm_campaign=FBPost

I was especially intrigued by a paragraph near the very end of the article:

"Prodigies share a common foundation—an extreme working memory, focused attention to detail, and a startling ability to lock in on an activity with single-minded focus. But beyond these bedrock traits, they have unique cognitive profiles that vary by their area of expertise, finds Ohio State researcher Joanne Ruthsatz. On the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, music prodigies have the most extreme working memories, while math and science prodigies excel at spatial visualization, the ability to picture an object's movement through space and its physical transformation. Art prodigies, though, have relatively poor spatial visualization—a tendency researchers tie to rich object visualization, the ability to picture an object's color, shape, and size in vibrant detail."

 

[Cosmophylla]

That's a really interesting article.

Some things I took from it:

- It's intriguing that my son (7) and I are so alike in some ways but so different in others. My son seems to have taken a more extreme version of my academic/intellectual ability and fewer of my problematic Aspie traits. It fits with the notion of a maternal gene passing on a muted version of autism. (I'm hopeless at summarising... If my phrase "muted version of autism" is completely off, please tell me!) That said he has also taken intellectual ability from his dad...

- From the paragraph you've quoted, DogwoodTree... it's funny because I would say I have excellent visual spatial awareness, but although I'm interested in maths I never excelled at it. (I'm definitely interested in science, though!) Plus, in high school I moved away from my interest in science and pursued my other love, Art...if I showed extreme talent anywhere, it was in drawing and painting. So does that mean I just have extreme object and spatial visualisation abilities? I am a visual thinker... Actually, to take this a bit further: I find it curious that an artist can have poorer spatial visualisation... It seems that spatial visualisation would contribute to artistic ability in that it allows the artist to "see"/picture/imagine the subject from different angles, in different lights, to compose an image by mentally juxtaposing objects until just right, etc. Surely this is an aid to creating art?

- it made me laugh to read how Gail and Gordon thought Griffin was normal because they had no idea about babies...that is exactly what we said about our son until someone said it wasn't normal that he was reading two digit sports scores off the TV at 22 months. I wonder if prodigies also struggle with emotional and social issues at all. Our son does...