What Prodigies Could Teach Us About Autism
Prodigies, like many autistic people, have a nearly insatiable passion for their area of interest. Lauren Voiers, an art prodigy from the Cleveland area, painted well into the night as a teenager; sometimes she didn’t sleep at all before school began. That sounds a lot like the “highly restricted, fixated interests” that are part of autism’s diagnostic criteria.
.. Prodigies also have exceptional working memories.
.. Extreme memory has long been linked to autism as well.
.. Simon Baron-Cohen, an autism researcher, and his colleagues have described an excellent eye for detail as “a universal feature of the autistic brain.”
.. Beyond the cognitive similarities, many child prodigies have autistic relatives. In the 2012 study, half of the prodigies had an autistic relative at least as close as a niece or grandparent. Three
.. Perhaps prodigies have a very specific and unusual form of autism: They have many of the strengths associated with the condition, but few of the difficulties. This makes prodigies potentially important not just for talent research but also for autism research.
.. Rather, the prodigies may be people who were at risk of having this condition, yet don’t.