The abilities of a musical savant and his family.
Musical savants with autism can show perfect pitch and rich recall when tasks stay rule-bound, even if their verbal scores are low.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Einfeld et al. (1995) watched one musical savant and his family.
They tested how well he could recall tunes, name notes, and improvise.
The team also gave IQ tests to see if music skill matched verbal skill.
What they found
The savant could replay long pieces after hearing them once.
He named any piano note correctly without a reference tone.
He made up new music that sounded smooth and rule-bound.
Yet his verbal reasoning scores were low.
How this fits with other research
Henson et al. (1979) and Thaut (1988) showed autistic kids can copy or improvise music as well as typical peers.
Matson et al. (2011) seems to disagree: their ASD teens could not spot happy or sad music.
Quintin et al. (2011) clears up the clash. Once IQ was held equal, high-functioning ASD teens did read musical emotion fine.
The gap is about age and IQ controls, not a real contradiction.
Why it matters
If a client loves music, use it. Let them learn facts through song cues. Let them earn time on a keyboard after work.
Check for perfect pitch: ask the child to name notes you play.
Treffert (2014) warns not to call every gifted child autistic; test carefully.
Music can be both reinforcer and strength even when language is weak.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The ability of a male autistic savant (TR) to play two unfamiliar piano pieces after listening to a tape-recording was tested, closely following the procedures of Sloboda, Hermelin, and O'Connor (1985). Other components of TR's musical ability--pitch recognition, improvisation, and ability to provide harmonic accompaniment--were also examined. TR's musical precocity was examined in relation to his general level of intellectual functioning as indexed by a battery of standardized psychological tests of intelligence, memory, reading, visual organization, and creativity. His parents and two male siblings also completed tests of intelligence. Results from psychometric testing indicated that TR has idiosyncratic levels of cognitive functioning with difficulties in verbal reasoning but high levels of concentration and memory. His speed of information processing, as indicated by Inspection Time, and was better than average. TR demonstrated perfect pitch recognition and other family members also demonstrated excellent relative pitch. TR's ability to recall and perform structured music within both the diatonic and whole-tone systems was exceptional but dependent upon his familiarity with musical structure and was therefore organized and rule-driven. Furthermore, TR demonstrated competence in improvisation and composition, albeit restricted by his adherence to structural representations of familiar musical rules.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1995 · doi:10.1007/BF02179286