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Now I realize, and I acknowledge, that the right brain/left brain distinction is a tremendous oversimplification. We don't come neatly divided into right and left hemispheres, but the fact is that the two hemispheres of the brain do specialize in certain functions.
Darold Treffert -
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names in research.
Darold Treffert
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To some extent, we all have quirks or idiosyncrasies, and some geniuses, because of how bright they are and how focused they are, may have liberal eccentricities, but they're not at a disabling level.
Darold Treffert -
We have medicalized a lot of things that I think are not really medical conditions.
Darold Treffert -
With respect to why some acquired savants are musical, and some are good at the arts, and some are mathematical, why aren't they all the same; I think that has to do with this genetic endowment that all of us have.
Darold Treffert -
There does seem to be a higher educational level in parents of autistic youngsters, and I guess that's something that we need to look into.
Darold Treffert -
Not everyone who has a savant skill I would equate with a genius.
Darold Treffert -
Originally when we talked about language disorder it was a catastrophic language disorder. It's substantial, and from a treatment standpoint it's okay to keep diluting that term, but from a research standpoint we need to be much more precise. I wish somebody would take up the mantle of just that particular task.
Darold Treffert
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I think one of the problems with the definition of autism is we keep expanding it. It started as "early infantile autism", and then it became "autism", and now it's "autism spectrum disorder". I'm not opposed to that from the standpoint of trying to broaden our vistas, and so forth. But from a research point of view, the term autism is lost in specificity.
Darold Treffert -
Savant syndrome and autism, I think, are not disorders of brain structure, but they're disorders of brain function.
Darold Treffert