As a psychology graduate student in 1998, Joanne Ruthsatz traveled to the bayous of Louisiana to meet a 6-year-old jazz prodigy. Ruthsatz had been studying exceptional adult and teenage performers, trying to understand the factors that account for their success. When she discovered that the boy’s cousin had autism, her mind raced and she began to wonder: Did her research subject’s genius music abilities have something to do with his cousin’s autism?
The question is the topic of a new book, The Prodigy’s Cousin, by Ruthsatz, now an assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University, and her daughter Kimberly Stephens, a journalist and sociologist. Building on 14 years of research by Ruthsatz, the authors examine multiple case studies of families that demonstrate the potential association between autism and prodigy and follow a trail of scientific studies that support this theory.
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