The Savant Syndrome In Rain Man

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Many of us have already seen the academy-award winning film, Rain Man, which brought a rare condition to the world’s attention. A few individuals that might happen to be savants may be walking pass by us; may it be a friend, a relative, or a stranger, and without our knowledge of it, that they might have gifts that are not found in an average human individual. Are they superhuman? Do they have super powers? No, they do not. They simply have this rare condition known as the Savant Syndrome. Although savants are people with serious mental or physical disabilities, they are gifted due to their unique cognitive skills. This paper presents the discussion on Savant Syndrome as a psychological condition in five parts. The first part of the paper…show more content…
The first one are skills that are inclined with the more cognitive and logical aspect of an individual, and the second classification are skills that are more on the creative and artistic aspect. Savant syndrome somewhat triggers a certain hemisphere of the brain which is responsible for the gifts they have obtained. According to the theory of left-brain or right-brain dominance, each side of the brain controls different types of thinking (Anderson, Ferguson, Lainhart, Nielsen & Zielenski, 2013). Savants have either developed their left side of the brain or their right when they were diagnosed with the Savant Syndrome. Rogers (2013) mentioned that the left-side of the brain is considered to be adept at tasks that involve logic, language and analytical thinking. The left-brain is often described as being better at: language, logic, critical thinking, numbers and reasoning. Those savants that are bright at calculating, mathematics and are very good at reasoning are likely to be left-brained; and those savants that are artistic and creative are right-brained. Based on the theory of the left-brain, right-brain dominance, the right hemisphere of the brain is best at expressive and inventive skills. Some of the skills that are linked to the right hemisphere of the brain are recognizing faces, expressing emotions, music, reading emotions, color, images, intuition, and creativity (Rogers,
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