A few months ago I watched a documentary about the high incident of people with severe mental retardation who were musical savants. It was incredible to watch a person play a complex piece of music with such skill and yet function at a three year old level. To me this demonstrates just how complex the brain is and how many mysteries related to human development lie within.
I have worked with many autistic children and the savants are an incredible side bar to the true disorder. In my experiences I have worked with a young 17 autistic male that was truly a wonder. He would count the numbers of letters in your words as you spoke them. This was not his only talent. He could also, by rote, tell you all the passengers of the Titanic and which berthing numbers each held. The sad thing was that he could not communicate anything else. If we did math together and learned the five times table, he would forget the next day or I would think that he had forgot. In all actuality he may have had them memorized, but his autistic mind could not communicate it after a few hours.
He could have had the number in his head in perfect order and could have known the subject matters, and for that matter, all his multiplication tables, but his communication process broke down and he was not able to get the numbers out of his head. His mind could be exploding with ideas and maybe genius inspirations. It would be horrible to have this in your own world and not be able to express or communicate it to others. To others, the boy would look like he was not communicating anything.
The other boy I worked with had the talent of counting things. He would carry around several boxes of sugar from the lunchroom and spread the sugar on a table. He would take an index card and separate the sugar into individual piles of 100 grains per pile. He would make 100 piles and then stop. If I interrupted him during his ritual, he would scream, cry, and even tried to hit me one time. Thought maybe not a talent, but as an adult and if the schools could teach him repetition, then maybe he could work sorting items on an assembly line.
To work with an autistic child is a wonderful, but exasperating experience. One that has a savant talent is more exasperating because you know there is a intelligent, talented student that cannot communicate his world.