Autistic Savants (Polyglots) Language Learning Forum

Autistic Savants
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Darklight1216
Diglot
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5100 days ago
411 posts - 639 votes

Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German

Message 33 of 35

10 August 2013 at 5:55pm | IP Logged

Maecenas23 wrote:

Are there French speakers who can assess his French?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylTrm3x-DuY

Well, I'm not a native speaker, but I think his French is quite good.

There was also a comment below the video:

Quote:

Il parle un français à un niveau excellent, il a un accent c'est tout :) Une personne extraordinaire, et c'est tellement triste de le voir parmi un banc de cons de la télé...

"He speaks French at an excellent level, he has an accent, that's all. An extraordinary person, and it's really sad to see him with a bunch of [dumb tv personalities]*"

*Other insults could be used.

Of course I can't verify that the person I quoted is a native French speaker either.

Edited by Darklight1216 on 10 August 2013 at 5:56pm
2 persons have voted this message useful

montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4828 days ago
2371 posts - 3676 votes

Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

Message 34 of 35

10 August 2013 at 8:13pm | IP Logged

Interesting that the current version of the Wikipedia article seems to accept without any
question whatsoever his status as an autistic savant.

Either evidence for fraudulent activity has been looked for and found to be wanting, or
the article is regularly sanitised by the man himself or his allies. :-)

The Royal Society of Arts evidently thinks he is a good guy.
2 persons have voted this message useful

schoenewaelder
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5560 days ago
759 posts - 1197 votes

Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch

Message 35 of 35

11 August 2013 at 2:25am | IP Logged

montmorency wrote:

Either evidence for fraudulent activity has been looked for and found to be wanting, r the article is regularly sanitised by the man himself or his allies. :-)

If you click on the "talk" page, it does seem to be a combination of those two factors. I'm not really familiar with the talk pages on wiki, and it's a little confusing to follow what's going on, but most of it seems to be to do with the controversy.

It seems there is (or was) someone, possibly Tammet, but I guess that must be just speculation, who was constantly editing out anything negative.

But more importantly, wiki does not rely on original research, it solely collates published, referencable information, so it is irrelevant that there are a load of snippets of information lying around the internet that are pretty incriminating as to his previous careers as a psychic con-artist and mnemonist, unless/until some reputable independent source investigates and publishes their findings.

That is my understanding, but to be honest, I got bored reading it.

That said there are a couple of mentions of the doubts on the main article, it's just not extrapolated to suggest he may be a complete fraud.

Wiki wrote:

In another study, Simon Baron-Cohen and others at the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge tested Tammet's abilities in around 2005.[23] He was found to have synaesthesia according to the "Test of Genuineness-Revised" which tests the subjects' consistency in reporting descriptions of their synaesthesia. He performed well on tests of short term memory (with a digit-span of 11.5, where 6.5 is typical). Conversely, test results showed his memory for faces scored at the level expected of a 6–8 year old child in this task. The authors speculated that Tammet's savant memory could be a result of synaesthesia combined with Asperger syndrome, or it could be the result of mnemonic strategies.

Wiki wrote:

In his book Moonwalking with Einstein (2011), science journalist and former US Memory Champion Joshua Foer speculates that study of conventional mnemonic approaches has played a role in Tammet's feats of memory. While accepting that Tammet meets the standard definition of a prodigious savant, Foer suggests that his abilities may simply reflect intensive training using standard memory techniques, rather than any abnormal psychology or neurology per se.[27] In a review of his book for The New York Times, psychologist Alexandra Horowitz described Foer's speculation as among the book's few "missteps", because the issue of whether or not savants such as Tammet make use of such strategies is irrelevant.[28]

It seems extremely odd that he has been elected a fellow of the Royal Acedemy. I would have assumed you needed a very established academic career for that, but I guess it's not as exclusive as I thought.

Wiki wrote:

Fellows of the RSA

Individuals are elected to the Fellowship,[3][4][5] and becoming a Fellow is considered to be an honour.[6][7][8] Fellows must have demonstrated achievement or potential related to the arts, manufactures and commerce. The RSA says, "The RSA Fellowship is an international community of over 27,000 achievers and influencers from a wide array of backgrounds and professions, distinguished by the letters FRSA. Fellows are social entrepreneurs to scientists, community leaders to commercial innovators, artists and journalists to architects and engineers, and many more."[9]

Edited by schoenewaelder on 11 August 2013 at 2:36am

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