Autistic Savant’s New Sociability, Plus Grasp of Numbers, Yield Success
Tell Eric Robinson the date you were born and he’ll immediately give you the day of the week you first drew breath. Same with dates in the future. He’s a human calendar.
Yet it is only weeks since the 19-year-old autistic savant mastered buttoning his own clothes, allowing him to trade elastic-waisted trousers for his first button-up Levis.
Eric will graduate June 2 from a special education program that has taught him the joy of work in an alien world. By the time he earns his diploma, Eric hopes to have found a life’s work in numbers.
A recent issue of the Viewmont High School newspaper dubbed Eric the school’s “Rain Man.” He shares many traits with the movie’s title character, but there are important differences.
Can Hold Down Jobs
Eric’s calendar calculations and aptitude for figures don’t make him a prodigious savant like Raymond Babbitt, played by Dustin Hoffman. But unlike Babbitt, Eric’s mania for numbers and improving social skills let him hold down a job. They loved him in trials at a video store and the school library.
Tests show Eric to be also mildly retarded, but coupled with his numbers skills, his quest for work in a post office or city library is promising.
“They are usually so incapacitated in other ways that their skill won’t help them,” said Dr. Edward R. Ritvo of the UCLA School of Medicine, one of the country’s leading authorities on autism.
Indeed, those who knew Eric when he was younger are surprised at his blossoming sociability. Greetings in the corridors are returned with a not-so-nervous “Hi,” and he has somewhat relaxed the obsessive routines and rituals that govern an autistic life.
“I was worried because I had heard that they got worse as they got into adolescence and families had to decide what to do with them. With Eric just the opposite happened. He just seemed to improve,” said his mother, Candace Robinson.
‘A Huge Success Story’
“He’s just a huge success story for parents with autistic kids who normally feel isolated, frustrated and believe . . . it’s a burden that will never let up,” said Cindy Anderson, Eric’s special education teacher.
Years ago, Anderson’s first autistic student spoke only in the second-person and was prone to unpredictable rages that injured herself and others. Eric, her third autistic pupil, is the first savant and the only one to shine at the community vocational opportunities Anderson arranges.
“I think he’s trying to understand people’s feelings,” she said. “It’s a very rote process, a very mechanical process.”
Autism--absorption in self-centered, subjective mental activity--is a severe disorder present in four of 10,000 births, an overwhelming majority of them males. Its cause is unknown, but evidence suggests chemical or structural abnormalities in the brain. Among its characteristics is a profound disability in forming normal human attachments or in showing or receiving affection.
Eric stiffens up when hugged, even by his parents and won’t let on if he is sick or in pain.
Journal Publishes Study
A study by Ritvo and others published in February’s American Journal of Psychiatry shows that about two-thirds of those with autism have some degree of mental retardation, scoring below 70 on standardized IQ tests.
Only about 10% of autistic people fall into the savant category, and far fewer of those are mentally retarded, other studies show.
Candace Robinson believes her son, who hoards bus schedules and loves to read the phone books he gets at Christmas, performs his calendar gymnastics by visual rather than mathematical means.
“I used to wonder if he was calculating dates, but I really believe it’s a matter of having a photograph in his mind of our 100-year calendar. I asked him dates in the 1800s the other day, and he couldn’t do it,” she said.
That’s Eric’s explanation, too, elicited in what is typically a one-sided conversation with a stranger. He nervously checks his watch every few seconds.
How do you figure out what day somebody was born? “I have a good memory.”
What do you want to do after graduation? “Have a job.”
Something with numbers? “Yes.”
Convenient, Vast Memory
He is a whiz at simple math, and his memory for numbers is as convenient as it is vast. “He makes a great phone directory,” says brother Dan.
“I think about anything he sees he’s likely to remember,” said his mother, who spent hours a few years ago making flash cards of multiplication tables, only to have Eric render them useless by memorizing the answers the first time through.
Peggy Graham, manager of Video USA in this Salt Lake City suburb, accepted Eric for an hour-a-day training on a two-week trial basis. He stayed for 1 1/2 years, quickly memorizing the shelf code for every videocassette in the store and eventually mastering the computer to check in movies.
“He was amazing with numbers,” Graham said. But it took him six months to routinely talk to other employees and much longer to pass time with customers. “I used to stand by the door and say, ‘Eric, you can’t leave until you say goodby to everybody.’ He would finally mumble goodby.”
Makes Emotional Connection
“The emotional connection is the last to be made by an autistic child,” Anderson said. “It’s so difficult to make people understand the excitement you feel when they finally start making that connection.”
An earlier stint shelving books at the school library gave Eric command of the Dewey Decimal System and friendship with the once-skeptical librarian.
