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Question why some people call me a savant

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Oz67

Well-Known Member
Due to my symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder, why do some people think that I am a savant? I am not a savant, I just am very intelligent in my restricted interests.
 
Savantism is a bit more specific than accrued knowledge on limited topics. It is prodigy level talent with things like music, math, puzzles, dates, numbers, eidetic memory, perfect pitch, etc...

It is an innate skill set hardwired into the brain, unaffected by other learning or intellectual disabilities. Most people don't understand the difference between autism and savantism, which can be associated with autism, but is not exclusive to the neurodivergence. Savantism is a separate, but often comorbid divergence.
 
Oren Franz said:
Due to my symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder, why do some people think that I am a savant? I am not a savant, I just am very intelligent in my restricted interests.
Click to expand...
In a single word? That's both easy and tragic IMO.

- Hollywood. The result of living in a world where the masses embrace pop culture over science or medicine.

Where you can't be identified as merely being autistic and/or having OCD, but rather that we are a "Rain Main", or "Sheldon", "Dr. Shaun"....or something along such lines the masses can relate to. Even when it is profoundly not the case.

Though in all fairness to the masses, autism itself is anything but simple to understand.
 
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They might call you savant because you are very intelligent to your interests.
They don't understand what savant mean.
But it's way better to call you savant than stupid.
 
Savant Syndrome is the consequence --albeit a beneficial one-- of a specific brain injury. (IIRC, it is the left temporal lobe.) As such, it is a possible co-morbid to autism.

General giftedness seems to arise from a different mechanism, though autism is represented more frequently among gifteds than it is among non-gifteds, usually as ASD1.
 
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