Enhanced perception in savant syndrome: patterns, structure and creativity

Abstract

According to the enhanced perceptual functioning (EPF) model, autistic perception is characterized by: enhanced low-level operations; locally oriented processing as a default setting; greater activation of perceptual areas during a range of visuospatial, language, working memory or reasoning tasks; autonomy towards higher processes; and superior involvement in intelligence. EPF has been useful in accounting for autistic relative peaks of ability in the visual and auditory modalities. However, the role played by atypical perceptual mechanisms in the emergence and character of savant abilities remains underdeveloped. We now propose that enhanced detection of patterns, including similarity within and among patterns, is one of the mechanisms responsible for operations on human codes, a type of material with which savants show particular facility. This mechanism would favour an orientation towards material possessing the highest level of internal structure, through the implicit detection of within-and between-code isomorphisms. A second mechanism, related to but exceeding the existing concept of redintegration, involves completion, or filling-in, of missing information in memorized or perceived units or structures. In the context of autistics' enhanced perception, the nature and extent of these two mechanisms, and their possible contribution to the creativity evident in savant performance, are explored.

Is Synaesthesia More Prevalent in Autism Spectrum Conditions? Only Where There Is Prodigious Talent

“…Veridical mapping and hypersystemizing may themselves emerge from other traits tied to autism, which are sensory hypersensitivity, excellent attention to detail and superior lowlevel perceptual abilities Mottron et al, 2006). Importantly, Mottron, Dawson and Soulières (2009;also Bouvet at al., 2014;Mottron et al, 2013) have hypothesised that veridical mapping may motivate savant syndrome, and may independently motivate synaesthesia. For example, Mottron et al (2013) suggest that the savant skill of hyperlexia (precocious reading ability) depends on veridical mapping across language systems: i.e., detecting patterns between the written system of graphemes and the spoken system of phonemes.…”

Do drawing stages really exist? Children’s early mapping of perspective.

“…Autistic individuals are also remarkably adept in depicting in three dimensions because they seem to be better able to ignore iconic object meaning than control participants (Sheppard, Ropar, & Mitchell, 2007Sheppard, Mitchell, & Ropar, 2008; see also Tallandini & Morassi, 2008. The discussion in the literature focuses on the questions of whether individuals with autism have privileged access to lower level, less-processed visual information (Snyder, 2009) or whether they show enhanced visual perception (Mottron, Dawson, & Soulières, 2009) and sensory hypersensitivity (Baron-Cohen, Ashwin, Ashwin, Tavassoli, & Chakrabarti, 2009). Indeed, drawing in perspective may be a result of not categorizing and extracting relevant object features (Plaisted Grant, & Davis, 2009).…”

Developing Synaesthesia

“…Besides the highly concrete representation of abstract concepts in savants, which has been reported anecdotally, (Murray, 2010), theoretical models showing the development of exceptional abilities related to autism point to the parallels with synesthesia (Murray, 2010;. Specifically, the relation to synesthesia has been discussed in great detail in the context of veridical mapping, the coupling of homolog elements of recurrent isomorphic patterns, which has been proposed as an extension to the above-mentioned EPF model (Mottron et al, 2009). Veridical mapping includes, but is not restricted to, the strategic use of "if p, then q" rules .…”