

One obstacle to studying autism in adulthood has been finding autistic adult participants. In 2011, another team wrote that research on older adults with autism was “ practically nonexistent.” The scientists Patricia Howlin and Julie Lounds Taylor characterized autism in adulthood as “woefully under researched” in a special 2015 Autism issue. As Nancy Minshew, the director of the Center for Excellence in Autism Research at the University of Pittsburgh, said, though autistic adults have been involved in neuroscience and genetics studies, the research landscape “has been a desert” when it comes to adult treatments and other adulthood-specific issues. There’s a similar drop-off in autism research when it comes to adulthood. While there have been longitudinal studies of children with extremely high IQs, nothing similar exists for truly prodigious children. No one really knows what becomes of child prodigies as adults.
#Autistic piano prodigy full
Unfortunately, a lack of research into the full lifespan is one more thing that the two have in common. Many child prodigies have autistic family members, and there’s even preliminary evidence that prodigy and autism may share a genetic link. These traits are also associated with autism. Child prodigies aren’t typically autistic, but they have extreme working memories, excellent attention to detail and a striking passion for their area of interest (imagine a kid who paints every day after kindergarten, devours images of Georgia O’Keeffe’s art and begins showing her own work at 7). The availability of relevant research similarly plummets.Īs we recount in our new book, The Prodigy’s Cousin, there are many hidden links between autism and prodigy. According to a study published in 2011, many autistic young adults experience a “steep drop” in services after high school. That phrase-” falling off a cliff“-is often used in the context of autism to describe the transition from adolescence to adulthood. But from a scientific perspective, there was nothing. The media occasionally reported about Erwin, and a biographer later wrote an account of his life. The question of what becomes of such children when they grow up is intriguing.
#Autistic piano prodigy professional
A child prodigy is defined in the scholarly literature as someone who performs at an adult professional level in a demanding field before adolescence.
