O'Connor N, Hermelin B
MRC Developmental Psychology Project, University of London, Institute of Education, U.K.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 1988 Jul;29(4):391-6. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.1988.tb00732.x.
In summary, our research enables us to conclude that specific talents are found in people who differ widely in general intelligence levels and such talents should therefore be regarded as at least partly intelligence-independent. However, between normal and mentally handicapped populations and even within the idiot savant group, general cognitive capacity plays some part in determining the manner in which talents manifest themselves. Idiot savant special abilities can neither be regarded as the sole consequence of practice and training, nor are such skills based only on an efficient rote memory. Instead, idiots savants use strategies which are founded on the deduction and application of rules governing the material upon which their special ability operates. They also generate novel or new examples of such rule based structures just as we do in our use of language. Because of the much greater prevalence of idiots savants in the autistic than in the mentally handicapped population, some characteristic common to both autism and specific giftedness might be assumed. An obsessional pre-occupation with a limited section of the environment might be a common factor to both. It may be this rather than autism itself which is relevant to the idiot savant phenomenon.
总之，我们的研究使我们能够得出结论，特定的天赋存在于一般智力水平差异很大的人群中，因此这种天赋至少应被视为部分独立于智力。然而，在正常人群和智力障碍人群之间，甚至在白痴学者群体内部，一般认知能力在决定天赋表现方式方面发挥着一定作用。白痴学者的特殊能力既不能被视为练习和训练的唯一结果，也不是仅仅基于高效的死记硬背。相反，白痴学者使用的策略基于对其特殊能力所涉及材料的规则进行推导和应用。他们还会像我们使用语言时一样，生成基于此类规则结构的新颖示例。由于白痴学者在自闭症患者中比在智力障碍人群中更为普遍，因此可以假设自闭症和特定天赋存在一些共同特征。对环境中有限部分的强迫性关注可能是两者的共同因素。可能正是这一点而非自闭症本身与白痴学者现象相关。
