Autistic Savants Confuse Society
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by Grace Armstrong
plain
2017-11-19T17:40:00-08:00
Savant syndrome in autistics also confuse society because it makes it harder to place the person with the disorder into a set category. Humans naturally place what they perceive of the world into groups based on their set prototype of the subject (Lee, Yueh-Ting, 2013). But it is difficult to group autistic savants. Sacks attempted to, but was left bewildered. He states “Stephen is neither an ament [an idiot], nor a computer, nor a Homo erectus- all our models, all our terms, break down before him”(241). The first group one may put someone in with autism is deficient. Oliver states Stephen had a verbal IQ of only 52, 50 percent of autistics are mute, and 95 percent “lead very limited lives"(242). All these facts would make it easy to categorize someone with autism as an ament, as Sacks describes. Savants are held to the opposite regard. Now you have an individual that seems inhuman, but in another way. Savants hold superhuman talents, with little effort involved, such as Stephen drawing in great detail almost subconsciously while the world carried on around him. While Stephen would display his special abilities, Oliver would write in his notebook “AUTISM DISAPPEARS" (239). All of the characteristics of a savant would lead society to place one into the category as extraordinary, gifted, and superior. So when these two distinct characteristics are combined, as in the case of Stephen and other autistic savants, society becomes confused, and does not know what to think of the individual. This is a main reason why autistic savants are so perplexing but interesting to society.
By Grace Armstrong
