1,729,899 research outputs found
Treating a case of Savant syndrome
Get PDFMemory and artistic prodigies among the population at large are uncommon; among the mentally retarded, they are rarer still. This article describes the treatment of such a case, technically known as the Savant Syndrome, seen by occupational therapists at Mount Carmel Psychiatric Hospital and treated over a period of 18 years.peer-reviewe
Memory characteristics in individuals with savant skills
No full textIn this chapter it is argued that memory performance provides a coherent picture of savant abilities, even though the talents displayed make different demands on memory and learning. The chapter opens with an introduction to savant talent, to issues in relation to domain-specificity and modularity, as well as the role of practice and implicit memory. These topics have been picked out because of their relevance to memory and also because of associations with autism. Three sections then follow which focus on savant memory performance amongst numerical and calendar calculators, musicians and artists, where the evidence from empirical studies is placed in the context of the issues raised in the Introduction. Finally, a theoretical interpretation is presented which, it is argued, provides a convincing account of the development of savant abilities
Executive functions in savant artists with autism
Get PDFAlthough executive functions have been widely studied in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), there have been no direct empirical studies of executive abilities in savants with ASD. This study assessed three facets of executive ability (fluency, perseveration and monitoring) in savant artists with ASD, compared to non-talented adults with ASD or mild/moderate learning difficulties (MLD). Executive functions were assessed in and out of the savants’ domain of expertise: on design fluency and card sort tasks, respectively. The design fluency task suggested a sparing of executive abilities in the savant artists, relative to the non-talented ASD group; an effect not observed on the card sort task. The idea that islets of ability involve functions that are protected from more general cognitive deficits in ASD is explored
Numbers and letters: Exploring an autistic savant's unpractised ability
No full textThis paper describes an individual with autism and high-level calendar calculation ability who could perform a set of unpractised letter/number association tasks. The savant's performance was compared with that of two control participants, one a departmental secretary and the other a professor of mathematics. The facility with which the savant could master the rules governing the relationships between the series of items suggests that he possessed a flexibility of mental processing transcending his ability of calendar calculation. Furthermore, he could recalibrate previous knowledge to solve new hitherto unpractised tasks. When presented with novel problems, the savant, unlike the mathematician, made no initial errors at all on any of the presented tasks, thereby indicating his fast and spontaneous recognition of new rules and of new relationships between items. It is concluded that a cognitive style of 'weak central coherence' as adopted by autistic savants may protect single representations from being retained in the form of stable enduring wholes, and that such a segmentation strategy may allow for the transformation, reorganization and reconstruction of the relationship between single items of information
Melody and pitch processing in five musical savants with congenital blindness
Get PDFAbstract. We examined absolute-pitch (AP) and short-term musical memory abilities of five musical savants with congenital blindness, seven musicians, and seven non-musicians with good vision and normal intelligence in two experiments. In the first, short-term memory for musical phrases was tested and the savants and musicians performed statistically indistinguishably, both signifi- cantly outperforming the non-musicians and remembering more material from the C major scale sequences than random trials. In the second experiment, participants learnt associations between four pitches and four objects using a non-verbal paradigm. This experiment approximates to testing AP ability. Low statistical power meant the savants were not statistically better than the musicians, although only the savants scored statistically higher than the non-musicians. The results are evidence for a musical module, separate from general intelligence; they also support the anecdotal reporting of AP in musical savants, which is thought to be necessary for the development of musical-savant skill
First person – Savant Thakur
Get PDFABSTRACT
First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open. Savant Thakur is first author on ‘HSP70 drives myoblast fusion during C2C12 myogenic differentiation’, published in BiO. Savant was a Ph.D. student in the lab of Professor Gordon S. Lynch at the Centre for Muscle Research, Department of Physiology, The University of Melbourne, working towards understanding the mechanisms of defective muscle repair in muscle diseases and wasting disorders. Sadly, Savant passed away on June 16, 2019 and so one of his supervisors, Professor Lynch, spoke to BiO about Savant's work and character
Savant-oireyhtymä
Get PDFSavant-oireyhtymä on harvinainen psykopatologinen oireyhtymä. Oireyhtymän omaavalla on poikkeuksellisia kykyjä, jotka ilmenevät synnynnäisen tai hankitun oireyhtymän myötä. Erityistaidot liittyvät usein kalenterilaskentaan, matematiikkaan, taiteeseen, muistiin, musiikkiin tai mekaanisiin taitoihin.
Opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena on kuvata savant-oireyhtymän omaavien oireita ja niiden vaikutusta jokapäiväiseen elämään. Tavoitteena on tuottaa tietoa savant oireyhtymästä. Opinnäytetyön sisältöä voi hyödyntää sairaanhoitajat tai muut terveydenhuoltoalan ammattilaiset sekä alan opiskelijat.
Tiedonhaku kirjallisuuskatsauksessa toteutettiin kuudessa tietokannassa. Valituilla hakusanoilla saatiin hakutuloksia yhteensä 56 kappaletta. Sisäänotto- ja poissulkukriteerien jälkeen hakutuloksia jäi kymmenen. Valitut tutkimukset ovat kansainvälisiä lääketieteellisiä artikkeleita ja tutkimuksia. Sisällönanalyysi toteutettiin käyttämällä induktiivista sisällönanalyysimenetelmää.
Oireyhtymän omaavalla kiinnostus rajoittuu yleensä yhteen kohteeseen. Erityiskyvyt ovat jopa automaattisia, eivätkä ne kehity kuten normaalit lahjakkuudet. Muisti on keskeisin kyky savant-oireyhtymän omaavalla ja sitä kuvataan eideettiseksi sekä yksityiskohtaiseksi. Keskeistä savant-oireyhtymän syntyyn on aivojen aineenvaihdunnan muutokset.
Haasteena kirjallisuuskatsauksen tekemisessä oli hoitotyönnäkökulman puuttuminen tieteellisissä artikkeleissa ja tutkimuksissa. Kehitysehdotuksena sekä mahdollisena jatkotutkimus vaihtoehtona olisikin hoitotyönnäkökulma savant-oireyhtymässä
The dissemination of the Digital Humanities within research on Biblical, Early Jewish and Christian Studies
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