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I think what is more confounding is that such signs can be both mild ASD and brain immaturity/slow development. In particular, I am thinking about the child of a family friend who appeared to me clearly mild (beyond borderline) ASD and was classified with an IEP for ASD by the school district in K. Interestingly, this child also had a couple of savant traits (give him any date and he can give you the day of the week immdediately, etc.) that disappeared after the ASD signs improved substantially many years down the road. It struck me as odd that the savant ability disappeared as his behavior improved substantially into the "borderline" range - one of those mysteries of the brain.
I don't think this is mysterious. It is just two cases of developmentally normal growing up. The linked article already describes how various behaviors that look autistic are often really just various forms of immaturity that are grown out of.
In the case of disappearing savant skills (and there was a thread here a while back with several examples of this, e.g. our DSthen3 could rattle off the elements from memory but has long since forgotten them, and can't even remember doing it) my theory is the gifted toddler's mind is in high gear, but unsophisticated, so they may display savant-like skills. As they grow up and become relatively more sophisticated their brains have a lot more skills than "mere" memory/calculation feats, so basically their brains have better things to do, and so the savant-like skills seem to fall by the wayside (imho).
Actually, this child still does not appear completely normal and probably never will; his father still exhibits some odd behaviors as well. Even after reading a substantial amount of research over the last two decades, I still find this topic mysterious, but that is just me.
Perhaps just like opinions regarding what constitutes giftedness, opinions regarding what constitutes savant abilities vary widely as well. It would never occur to me to consider memorization of a table or even a map as a savant ability. While not common, these kinds of memorization feats are not rare in very young children. The one savant ability that I described was still exhibited at a much older age and it wasn't an issue of memorization or obvious computation as it was pretty instantaneous. This child never had access to calendars centuries in the past or decades in the future.
I'm convinced that many people have savant skills that they either learn not to display to others, or simply never have much occasion to demonstrate.
Or they are things that aren't especially flashy, but also not exactly alluring, either.
Memorization of numerical or spatial data is often in the 'flashy' category with kids. But I know a number of adults who remember every phone number they've ever heard-- even once-- and can rattle them off in an amazing way. I have even known people who had that ability with auditory verbal information, and could "replay" conversations even from years before. I can remember color that way, and apparently have better color discrimination than 99% of humans (evidently).
It really is an inborn difference, I think. But I also don't think that these savant skills are all that rare. It's just stuff that doesn't COME UP naturally as children get older-- and almost never other than as, well, party tricks.
I used to be able to do the date/day thing but I can't quite remember how I did it. It was more of a pattern recognition thing than a calculation thing. I am not a math person. At all. Basically the dates move along the days in a pattern but then leap year messes up the pattern. But since leap year has a pattern too it just becomes part of the pattern (just the annoying part) and the difference in the number of years is how many cycles to go through the pattern. I am pretty sure that's how I did it. I was once considered gifted. But certainly not a savant. Now I have Mom Brain which means I am juggling too much on too little sleep. The preceding paragraph is a great example of my clarity of thought
Perhaps just like opinions regarding what constitutes giftedness, opinions regarding what constitutes savant abilities vary widely as well. It would never occur to me to consider memorization of a table or even a map as a savant ability. While not common, these kinds of memorization feats are not rare in very young children.
I don't really know how rare it is, but I think it's more rare than you are assuming here. I agree that it's hard to define what savantism is, though. I did not consider DD's map abilities all that amazing--cool. but not crazy weird--when she was doing it. First baby, etc. As she got older I began to see that it was kinda out there. Then somehow I saw this video: which has 5 million views. That could have been my DD. Eerie, actually, how much it is like her. My DH's jaw dropped when I showed it to him and pointed out the view count. There is another video with a child reciting a long poem which is also very like both my kids in toddlerhood--that one got a ton of attention as well.
She is still really good at learning stuff like geography, it must be said, but definitely knew more countries at two than she does now, which is kind of odd.
There is, of course, the question of "Can you intensively drill a child in this stuff at an early age," which is different. But at two, I don't think you could? Maybe?
My DS has good map memorizing skills. I think what impressed me was that I had no idea he was memorizing maps,never even showed him a map or named countries. I did hang a map on his wall though as a decoration. And then when I asked him where random states or countries were, he knew, and could describe where they were without even looking at a map and draw them from memory. So there was no drilling/teaching involved. I wouldn't call it a savant skill, but definitely odd. Esp. since I don't think he was spending very much time looking at maps. We hung a world map on his wall and 2 days later (after spending maybe 10 min in his room awake), he knew where almost all the random countries I named were, including Sudan, Finland, Denmark, etc. He described the Mediterranean Sea as a "lake" which cracked me up. He said Sudan is by Egypt and across the lake from Italy. He had no idea where Africa is (because it's not labeled on the map) but knew Sudan.
DS defintely has some spectrumy quirks. But I think gifted kids can do these things as well.
I don't really know how rare it is, but I think it's more rare than you are assuming here. I agree that it's hard to define what savantism is, though. I did not consider DD's map abilities all that amazing--cool. but not crazy weird--when she was doing it. First baby, etc. As she got older I began to see that it was kinda out there. Then somehow I saw this video: which has 5 million views. That could have been my DD. Eerie, actually, how much it is like her. My DH's jaw dropped when I showed it to him and pointed out the view count. There is another video with a child reciting a long poem which is also very like both my kids in toddlerhood--that one got a ton of attention as well.
That is a very cute video, I love how she jumps down but decides she wants more. And she wants to repeat the name of many of the countries. Perhaps it's because I have a gifted child but I don't see this as being that exceptional. Seems an extension of a toddlers need to learn a label for everything.
Here is the kid reciting the poem that I was talking about--800,000 views. The subject matter is a bit unusual, but my kids certainly recited things of this length (longer) and with this kind of expression at this age (and DS was really into a book of poetry that included some sophisticated poetry). I did not think it was so odd when they did this, but other people definitely did. I do not think this is really savant, though.
