An extreme example is Matthew
Whitaker, whom I first saw featured on 60 Minutes. Born prematurely, at
twenty-four weeks, Matthew was not expected to survive. He defied the odds. But
he became blind as a result of a condition known as attendant retinopathy. When
he was three, his grand-father gave him a small electronic keyboard. Matthew
immediately started playing it, easily sounding out songs he had heard, such as
"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." At the age of five, Matthew became
the youngest student to be admitted to the Filomen M. D'Agostino Greenberg
Music School for the blind and visually impaired in New York City. His teacher
reported that the morn-s? after he attended a concert of her performing a
Dvorak piano quintet, she heard him playing not only the piano part but all
four parts for strings. Matthew now travels the world playing jazz
professionally.
?
Temple
Grandin "Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in
Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions" (2022)
