Thursday, October 06, 2011

No end to the inconsistencies in info regarding the mysterious Mr Tammet

At The Free Library by Farlex one can find a 2005 press article by Rachael Bletchley about Daniel Tammet which includes some assertions about Tammet which are interestingly at odds with more recent writings about Tammet, such as a claim that Tammet can recall the face of every person he has ever met (although in later years Tammet has claimed more than once to have a severe impairment in face memory), and a description of Tammet as having been left with "virtually no disability" following epilepsy that he had in early childhood, even though Tammet was reportedly diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a type of autism, around 2004 by Prof Simon Baron-Cohen, who is regarded as an expert on Asperger syndrome, which is considered to be a definite disability by many people.

I find it amusing that I can click through from this article which asserts that Tammet is virtually free from disability, on a hyperlink at Tammet's name, to get to The Free Dictionary by Farlex, which has a fairly detailed article all about Tammet, which describes him as "a writer with high-functioning autism". I guess we get back to the debate about whether or not AS is a disability or a difference. To most people I think the two articles will look inconsistent, but this is not the fault of the people at Farlex, who archive and make available articles first published by other media outlets, and for that I'm most grateful.

One odd thing that I have noticed about the article about Tammet at The Free Dictionary is the assertion that despite Tammet's often-described number-related visual synaesthesia "The number 6 apparently has no distinct image". If this were true I'd regard this as interesting in regard to synaesthesia, but oddly, one of the links given in the article to support this assertion doesn't appear to say anything about this number, and the other, Tammet's first autobiography, twice mentions synaesthesia visual images associated with the number six. It appears that just about every bit of information written about Tammet is to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Reference


Beltchley, Rachael (2005) Brain Man!: Fit at age3 turns Dan into whiz who can add like a calculator and learn a language in 15hrs just like film hero; MIND-BOGGLING SKILLS OF MODEST TEACHER. People, The (London, England) January 30th 2005. republished by The Free Library by Farlex.



http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Brain+Man!%3A+Fit+at+age3+turns+Dan+into+whiz+who+can+add+like+a...-a0127912950

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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:20 AM

    To be fair to Tammet, I don't think there is much of an inconsistency in his description of his synaesthesia for the number "six". Across multiple publications, he consistently describes it as "small", "indistinct", "nothingness", "a void" etc. His illustration of the number six in his book "Born on a Blue Day", above the chapter heading for chapter six, is a small dot.

    It appears to me that he has kept to a consistent story for his synaesthesia at least since he was originally studied in San Diego by Ramachandran and others, which was in Summer 2004.

    Mr Anon

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  2. Lili Marlene8:31 AM

    It's well worth checking for consistency in descriptions of synaesthesia. I believe it is the one criterion for genuine synaesthesia that is used in testing by academics. One top researcher has argued that consistency might not be a universal feature of synaesthesia, but I believe it is applicable to grapheme-colour synaesthesia, which covers coloured numbers and letters.

    I've not checked Tammet's synaesthesia descriptions for consistency, but I have done this in the past for a controversial person who claimed to have autism and synaesthesia and many other interesting conditions.

    I'm not sure if you are aware that the scenario of an adult who is given a formal diagnosis of autism in adulthood, who then tells their story by writing an autobiography in a book or online, then becomes famous and gains a popular following, and is then challenged by people who claim to have known the person pre-diagnosis who say the person didn't seem disabled or autistic then, is not a new story. Amanda Baggs and Donna Williams have been there and done that.

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