Savants: Mentally Retarded Individuals with Special Skills

Abstract

This chapter discusses the present state of knowledge regarding the development of special skills among the retarded. It describes the results of actual studies of these individuals and examines the theories and speculations, which have been proposed to explain the development of special skills. Research has examined the deficits and the abilities of savants, mechanisms, and environmental conditions associated with the development of a special skill. Savant is usually a male, mentally retarded person with a highly developed skill but no other specific emotional, etiological, or physiological characteristic, which distinguishes him from his peers. The performance of the savant appears to be based on concrete skills, implying an inability to abstract. The skills occur within one or several of seven areas: art, music, sensory discrimination, mechanics, memory of obscure facts, and calendar calculating. These skills are not phenomenal in the sense that normals do not display them but they do seem remarkable against the background level of retardation. This may be a reflection of a very low correlation between the abilities necessary for these skills and the abilities measured by an IQ test. The particular skills displayed by the savant is reduced to two overlapping categories of sensory/motor and rote memory. This explains the development of a special skill with reference to the normal population and the low incidence rate among the mentally retarded.