Savants, idiot and otherwise
From the Seattle Times, on a 12-year-old austic artist:
In the past, Wil would have been called a “savant,” a term now considered insensitive. Dager calls him extraordinarily talented.
“Savant” is insensitive? The more precise term I think of, and one that I can understand the dislike for, is “idiot savant“, where the juxtaposition of mental incapacities and shocking (savantish) talent is expressed explicitly.
But savant by itself? I’m wondering if this is me being out of touch with usage preferences and taboos in the autistic/special-needs/mental-health sector (possible), or there was some editing damage done to this article that reduced “idiot savant” to “savant” out of the same sensitivity that was then still being vestigially addressed in the paragraph.
Sounds like a research project.
Josh Millard Said,
May 7, 2008 @ 11:04 am
Googling for savant insensitive -”idiot savant”, in the theory that if “savant” itself is insensitive there might be folks saying as much using those words independent of an explicit callout to “idiot savant”, I’m found this:
“And he may not be smart at all; not every autistic child is a savant.”
But otherwise a lot of noise (brand names, unrelated topics, a couple of references to savantism collocated with “insensitive” but not in the desire context).
That’s one idea down.
Josh Millard Said,
May 7, 2008 @ 11:14 am
Search more simply for savant insensitve turns up more explicit references to austism, in the context of the phrase “idiot savant” specifically:
“The savant syndrome is a condition wherein a person is mentally retarded for most areas of intelligence that are commonly measured, but demonstrates an outstanding ability in a specific topic.
Of ‘idiot savant’, also from E2: “Although still in common usage, the term has been replaced amongst psychologists by autistic savant.”
This is interesting:
“Given the inappropriateness of the term as a whole and the pejorative connotation of the first part of it, Treffert (1989) proposed “savant syndrome”-or just “savant”-as a more desirable name for the phenomenon.”
Josh Millard Said,
May 7, 2008 @ 11:20 am
In fact, that last cited article, Extreme Precocity: Prodigies, Savants, and Children of Extraordinarily High IQ, appears to be a pretty decent basic writeup on (inter alia) the historical and current take on autistic savantism.
And as it’s from 2003, uses “savant” as the basic reference term, and deals explicitly with “idiot savant” and more recent explicit terminology choices, it seems like there’s a pretty good argument that the statement about “savant” being insensitive in the Seattle Times aregument may just be flawed, however it got there.
Of course, fashions can change in five years, and there could be a conflict between the dry language of an academic paper and what parents et al favor or dislike in practical usage. I have a feeling I could short-circuit this search if I could just do a small survey of folks who are parents of or who work with autistic folks.
Art Esian1 Said,
May 25, 2008 @ 5:06 am
Your deletion of Freeman Dyson’s post goes against free speech in America. How much science have YOU published in your storied carreer?
Josh Millard Said,
May 25, 2008 @ 10:41 am
Dr. Manns? Did you get lost on the way to the Metafilter contact form? Have you mistaken freedom of press for freedom speech?