savant

In popular fiction, savant skills and autism are almost synonymous. Portraying a character as a savant has become a way of driving home the fact that the character is autistic. The savant archetype is glaringly problematic because of the cultural baggage associated with idea of the "savant," because of the roles that autistic savants are relegated to in fiction, and because the stereotype of the autistic savant is enormously misleading. While "autism" and "savant" may go hand-in-hand in popular consciousness, the vast majority of autists are not savants and not all people who have savant skills are autistic.