Talk:Peak Human Intelligence/@comment-9597460-20130615005924/@comment-81.100.70.50-20130617153056

I completely agree with what you're saying and you're right about the limitations but you say L Lawliet and Nate River are functional enough to qualify for Enhanced Intelligence yet you say other savants are not because they are below 'standard intelligence'.

How can you prove that L Lawliet and Nate River (Near) have a full range of functional intelligence and in combination with extraordinary ability in select few areas.

Both didn't display any type of advanced knowledge or exceptional intellectual ability throughout the anime and manga series.

Both may give the impression to any normal viewer of being in the range of standard intelligence or above, they both may appear like they're high-functioning but the viewer's judgements are based on a limited scope of the character.

Savants have a great deficit in reasoning power and compensate with an incredible memory, a near-photographic tape recorder type memory (you've heard the phrase "thinking in pictures"), some are good actors and can hide their disability in any casual encounter with a neurotypical.

Throughout the duration of the series we don't see any proof of L Lawliet's supposed average or superior intellect, most of his ideas are vauge visual deductions from his working memory, his suspicions are the result of his experiance as a detective and his intuiton of psychology, and most of his acheivements such as gaining entrance to light's university with a 100% test score can be again attributed to his exceptional memory.

Rote memory and repetition acts as a substitute for traditional learning in savants, as they have serious mental disabilities, such as impairment in executive function.

L most likely used visual-spatial mnemonic techniques to pass the exams.

Let's not forget he is always single-minded, he cannot deal with basic tasks such as looking after himself (e.g. such as changing clothes), and he can't deal with common sense situations.

All we know is that he's good at covering up his low intelligence with his advanced vocabulary, way of speaking, his constant attention to detail, charismatic personality, his pattern recognition skills and creativity, and his enhanced memory capabilities.

This all does not mean that he's intelligent, he could score very low an IQ test yet talk as someone with a high IQ would and generally appear as someone who's highly capable.

My guess is L Lawliet's IQ is between 70-80 and the same with Nate River, which is below 'standard intelligence'.

So if you think they qualify as having Enhanced Intelligence I don't see a reason for why other moderately functioning savants with profound knowledge or genius in certain fields can't qualify.