Neuropsychological profile of an asperger's syndrome case with exceptional calculating ability

Abstract

Abstract Some mental retardates and Asperger's syndrome patients demonstrate a single exceptional talent, often musical or calculating ability, in the context of otherwise pervasive intellectual and social/interpersonal disability. Neuropsychological assessment of such individuals can shed light on the cognitive substrates for these unusual patterns of ability. This paper presents a neuropsychological case study of an Asperger's syndrome patient with remarkable mathematical abilities. Within a framework proposed by Rourke (1982), it is hypothesized that the social deficits associated with Asperger's syndrome may arise from longstanding difficulty with processing of information in novel situations, including decoding of visual information such as interpersonal cues and facial expressions. Relatively intact verbal skills may prevent these individuals from leading severely autistic lives and, in some cases, superior auditory verbal memory capacity may support development of extraordinary isolated “savant” sk...