Creativity in savant artists with autism.
Savant artists with autism shine on detail but trail art students on most creative measures, so tailor teaching to their specific strengths.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Pring et al. (2012) compared creative drawings from two groups. One group had savant artists with autism. The other group had art students without autism.
They gave both groups the same drawing and non-drawing creative tasks. Then they scored each work for originality, fluency, flexibility, and elaboration.
What they found
The savant artists did not win overall. Art students scored higher on most creativity measures.
Savants only did better on one drawing measure: adding more detail. On non-drawing tasks they also showed slightly more original ideas, but still lagged behind the students.
How this fits with other research
Webb et al. (1999) saw the same pattern years earlier. Autistic kids produced fewer imaginative ideas than peers, and their ideas stayed close to real life. The 2012 data extend that finding even to savants.
Stamoulis et al. (2015) adds nuance. Adults with mild autistic traits also come up with fewer ideas, yet the ideas they do have are more unusual. This supports the view that autism brings a unique, not globally lower, creative style.
Treffert (2014) narrative review warns against myth-making. Savant skills can grow and change; labeling savants as "naturally super-creative" misleads families and teachers. Linda et al. supply the numbers behind that warning.
Why it matters
When you plan art sessions, expect savant learners to add rich detail but not to out-create typical peers across the board. Build lessons that value their detail strength and give extra supports for flexible, original thinking. Praise concrete additions, then prompt for one new twist so creativity grows rather than stalls.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often display impairments in creativity, yet savant artists with ASD are reported to produce highly novel and original artistic outputs. To explore this paradox, we assessed nine savant artists with ASD, nine talented art students, nine non-artistically talented individuals with ASD, and nine individuals with mild/moderate learning difficulties (MLD) on tasks in and out of their domain of expertise. This was to ascertain whether the performance of the savant artists was related to their artistic ability, their diagnosis of ASD or their level of intellectual functioning. Results demonstrated that the responses of the art students were more creative (as assessed on measures of fluency, originality, elaboration, and flexibility) than the savant, ASD, and MLD groups on a drawing task. Although the savants did produce more elaborative responses than the ASD and MLD groups, no differences were observed on the other indices of creativity. On a non-drawing task, the savants produced more original outputs than the ASD and MLD groups (scoring similarly to the art students), but group differences were not observed on the other measures.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2012 · doi:10.1177/1362361311403783