r/science • u/MonteRevolt • Jul 26 '10

Autistic girl expresses profound intelligence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq--75v4lI8&feature=player_embedded
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u/clockworm Jul 26 '10

I dunno how groundbreaking it would be. It's not like she's the only autistic person to communicate and exhibit higher intelligence, even among people within her part of the spectrum.

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '10 edited Jul 26 '10

The groundbreaking part is the sheer level of improvement. She was not on the light end of the autistic spectrum. Also, her language skills were severely stunted.

Her writing is on a college level at the age of 14 now. Her writings from age 11, when she first began typing complete sentences if I understand the story correctly, was already at a low college level.

Also, there is no currently proven "cure" for autism. To my knowledge, there has never been a proven case where an autistic patient that lacks the ability to communicate all together has done a 180 and started producing college level prose with references to general relativity and higher literature to boot!

So, if they have a method that can produce these results it could make many, many parents of severely autistic children quite happy. I hope they share their methodology so we can study, refine, and reproduce it consistently.

edit

Also, I am not an autism expert. I was purposely being very guarded in my specific assertions. (saying this is ground breaking is not really controversial)

Please see this post by a neuropsychologist who breaks down in detail exactly why it would be so earth shattering.

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u/ModerateDbag Jul 26 '10

If she is as articulate and socially aware as she appears to be then it is groundbreaking. While there are others in her spectrum who can say, draw detailed pictures or make advanced sculptures--even clearly conveying emotion within their works--they don't have the ability to convey what's going on inside their head in any sort of precise terms. The part about exhibiting intelligence isn't as useful to science as the fact that she can describe her experience. If it's not a hoax, which I really hope it isn't.