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Idiot Savants

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Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

Scattered throughout the normal population are people who display highly developed special mental skills. We are surprised and awed when this occurs. When it occurs in children, we have coined a phrase to describe such individuals: the child prodigy. We know very little about prodigies (e.g., incidence rate, sex ratios). When prodigious abilities occur in individuals who have not developed normally (the developmentally disabled), we employ a rather derogatory misnomer: the idiot savant. Most of the otherwise mentally handicapped individuals who have developed special skills are not so disabled that the term idiot would be applicable, even in its once legitimate usage to mean the most profoundly retarded. In our own usage we shall omit the term idiot, and simply use savant, which is not appropriate either, but serves as a compromise with tradition.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Child Behavior Research, San Diego, California, 92116, USA

    Bernard Rimland

  2. Institute for Basic Research in Mental Retardation, Staten Island, New York, 10314, USA

    A. Lewis Hill

Authors
  1. Bernard Rimland
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  2. A. Lewis Hill
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York, USA

    Joseph Wortis M.D.

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© 1984 Plenum Press, New York

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Rimland, B., Hill, A.L. (1984). Idiot Savants. In: Wortis, J. (eds) Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-4610-4_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-4610-4_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4684-4612-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4684-4610-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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