Table 3.

Examples of savant skills reported on parental questionnaire.

computation	arithmetical calculations have become increasingly possible; easily able to multiply two numbers in the millions together in head; can tell the elevation of both the Sun and the Moon at any time on any date without reference to any book; has written a computer program about this
calendar calculations	when very young obsessed with ‘time’; learned to read digital/analogue/roman dials preschool; could tell folk when their birthday would occur (day of the week/what day of the week they were born on); can work out the day of a particular date in the future; however, soon gets fed up of being asked so is rarely tested on this ability
memory	has memorized a 100-year calendar; can tell you what day, say Christmas, occurs, over that 100 years; I bought the calendar ca 15 years ago and he just memorized all the pages; can tell you the name of any tunes he knows as soon as he hears the opening bars; we think he has outstanding memory ability but because he is reluctant to use speech, it is difficult to gauge how good it is; some examples: a few years ago, he was bought a book which was read to him; this year we read it to him again after over a year—if we stopped he would finish the rest of the sentence quite accurately; a second example is that he is able to give the names (both first and surnames) of his classmates at school 20 years earlier
visuospatial	successful in painting portraits of friends, friends' children and selling them; has exceptional talent for dealing with children; attends art classes at college of further education every week—an excellent tutor has succeeded in encouraging him to do the most outstanding abstract paintings which he has exhibited at the college; they bought one to use on their brochure; did not show this talent as a child or adolescent
music	has perfect pitch and is able to identify chords in pieces of music with ease
multiple skills: computation, music and memory	very talented in mathematics—evident since teens; Also has a very good memory of events that happened over the past number of years, i.e. knows the dates, days of the year when household appliances purchased; helps other people to fill in their CVs with dates for schools, jobs, etc; also quite talented in art as well as music; taught self to play the clarinet and guitar
calendar calculations, computation and music	calendar calculations, perfect pitch and music in general; arithmetic—always interested and good at this (for past 2 years has had several researchers visiting him testing him for calendar work, arithmetic and music)