Savant syndrome has a distinct psychological profile in autism.
James E A Hughes, Jamie Ward, Elin Gruffydd and 4 others
PMID 30344992WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic adults with savant skills reported more sensory, obsessional and systemising traits than autistic adults without them.
They did not differ on social or communication traits.
Key findings
01Autistic savants reported more sensory sensitivity than autistic nonsavants, and both autism groups reported more than controls.
02Autistic savants reported more systemising and technical/spatial traits than autistic nonsavants, but did not differ from nonsavants on social or communication traits.
03Autistic savants were slower than autistic nonsavants and controls on unprimed calendar questions, and slower than controls on primed questions; controls did not differ significantly from autistic savants on accuracy.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Savant skills were based on self-report rather than objective testing. The control group had more women than the autism groups, although the main patterns remained after controlling for gender. Experiment 2 used a small sample and only about 35 minutes of training, so it cannot show what would happen with longer learning. Participants were high-functioning autistic adults recruited from research databases, so results may not apply to autistic people with greater support needs. The study compared groups at one time and did not test an intervention, so it cannot show that these traits cause savant skills.
Declared interests
Funding was reported from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Medical Research Council. The supplied text does not include a separate author conflict-of-interest declaration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autistic savants learn calendar calculation better. In experiment 2, controls did not differ significantly from autistic savants on accuracy, and autistic savants were slower on unprimed questions.