Neuroscience
Think of super powers and most of us are influenced by the comic book super-heroes - the strength and flight of Superman or the web-slinging skills of Peter Parker. But super powers don't exist only in fiction. Back in reality, there are people with super abilities who walk among us, albeit that their skills tend to be more subtle than in the comics. What's more, increasingly these individuals are catching the interest of psychologists. Each day this week, we'll be posting a contribution from a person with a super ability or a researcher investigating an ability. The Digest's Super Week accompanies this month's "Super!" special issue of The Psychologist.
First up, welcome to Marc Umile - a calendar calculator who, with astonishing speed, is able to name the day of the week for any given date. Tomorrow we'll meet a super-recogniser.
I have always possessed the gift of eidetic memory for recalling huge amounts of information and a knack for finding structured patterns in seemingly chaotic data. But such abilities have been instrumental in helping me to discover yet another talent I never knew I had until about three years ago – calendar calculating.
Not too many people on the globe can take any date, regardless of how far back in the past or in the future the date is, and immediately know what day of the week the particular date fell on or would fall on. But through an extensive period of experimentation, I had soon discovered that I can do this incredible feat myself.
At the present time my ability to perform calendar calculation has become almost second nature, and it has now become something that I do almost on impulse. Every time I look at a past or future date in a magazine, a newspaper, a history book, or some other line of text containing such a date, I am able to calculate the correct day of the week with the date in question almost instantaneously. As an example – I wonder how many people really know that the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 was in fact signed on a Thursday.
I have even drafted my own structured outline of how this can be mastered by anyone, and have shared it with some influential experts in the field of psychology, including Dr. Darold Treffert, the foremost authority and author on the subject of savant syndrome. I believe that it is possible that such extraordinary feats of memory and calculating ability – thought to be only within the minds of autistic savants – can be tapped into by any person of otherwise conventional intelligence.
Calendar calculating seems to make me all the more in touch with the passage of time. Am I a savant? That seems to be the big question. I seem to fall under the category of what is called "Normal Savant" or "Normal Genius".
Marc Umile is a 47-year-old aviation fueler and package handler. In 2006 he memorized 15,314 digits of Pi, setting a North American record, in addition to memorizing 5,544 digits of the Square Root of 2 and 905 digits of "e".
--Further reading--
In 2009, we reported on research that compared the calendar calculating skills of autistic savants and neuro-typicals. The results suggested the two groups were using different strategies.
- "super Recognisers": More Than Just Clever Lab Rats
It's only within the last 10 years that psychologists have realised some people have extremely good face recognition abilities that set them apart from the rest of the population, a group they call "super recognisers". These individuals excel on established...
- Link Feast
Our pick of the best psychology and neuroscience links from the past week or so: Listen To Your Heart Our new Valentine's-themed podcast, plus loads more Valentine links and resources from The Psychologist magazine and our own archive. The Surprising...
- Day 2 Of Digest Super Week: Meet A Super-recogniser
For many years psychologists have studied people whose brain damage has impaired their ability to recognise faces. More recently it became clear that there is another group of individuals who are born with this deficit, or develop it early in childhood....
- Calendar Calculating Savants With Autism - How Do They Do It?
Savants with autism are people who exhibit an exceptional ability whilst also having social and cognitive impairments. One such ability is calendar calculating - being able to say, with astounding accuracy and alacrity, what day of the week a given date...
- Rare Counting Ability Induced By Temporarily Switching Off Brain Region
A minority of people with autism have one or more extraordinary intellectual talents, such as the rapid ability to calculate the day of the week for a given date, or to count large numbers of discrete objects almost instantaneously - they're often...
Neuroscience
Welcome to Digest Super Week!
First up, welcome to Marc Umile - a calendar calculator who, with astonishing speed, is able to name the day of the week for any given date. Tomorrow we'll meet a super-recogniser.
I Am a Calendar Calculator
Not too many people on the globe can take any date, regardless of how far back in the past or in the future the date is, and immediately know what day of the week the particular date fell on or would fall on. But through an extensive period of experimentation, I had soon discovered that I can do this incredible feat myself.
At the present time my ability to perform calendar calculation has become almost second nature, and it has now become something that I do almost on impulse. Every time I look at a past or future date in a magazine, a newspaper, a history book, or some other line of text containing such a date, I am able to calculate the correct day of the week with the date in question almost instantaneously. As an example – I wonder how many people really know that the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 was in fact signed on a Thursday.
I have even drafted my own structured outline of how this can be mastered by anyone, and have shared it with some influential experts in the field of psychology, including Dr. Darold Treffert, the foremost authority and author on the subject of savant syndrome. I believe that it is possible that such extraordinary feats of memory and calculating ability – thought to be only within the minds of autistic savants – can be tapped into by any person of otherwise conventional intelligence.
Calendar calculating seems to make me all the more in touch with the passage of time. Am I a savant? That seems to be the big question. I seem to fall under the category of what is called "Normal Savant" or "Normal Genius".
Marc Umile is a 47-year-old aviation fueler and package handler. In 2006 he memorized 15,314 digits of Pi, setting a North American record, in addition to memorizing 5,544 digits of the Square Root of 2 and 905 digits of "e".
--Further reading--
In 2009, we reported on research that compared the calendar calculating skills of autistic savants and neuro-typicals. The results suggested the two groups were using different strategies.
- "super Recognisers": More Than Just Clever Lab Rats
It's only within the last 10 years that psychologists have realised some people have extremely good face recognition abilities that set them apart from the rest of the population, a group they call "super recognisers". These individuals excel on established...
- Link Feast
Our pick of the best psychology and neuroscience links from the past week or so: Listen To Your Heart Our new Valentine's-themed podcast, plus loads more Valentine links and resources from The Psychologist magazine and our own archive. The Surprising...
- Day 2 Of Digest Super Week: Meet A Super-recogniser
For many years psychologists have studied people whose brain damage has impaired their ability to recognise faces. More recently it became clear that there is another group of individuals who are born with this deficit, or develop it early in childhood....
- Calendar Calculating Savants With Autism - How Do They Do It?
Savants with autism are people who exhibit an exceptional ability whilst also having social and cognitive impairments. One such ability is calendar calculating - being able to say, with astounding accuracy and alacrity, what day of the week a given date...
- Rare Counting Ability Induced By Temporarily Switching Off Brain Region
A minority of people with autism have one or more extraordinary intellectual talents, such as the rapid ability to calculate the day of the week for a given date, or to count large numbers of discrete objects almost instantaneously - they're often...