I recently came across another "What the heck?" article. In 2004: Marsh, Alexander, Packard, Zhu, Wingard, Quackenbush, and Peterson did a study on habit learning and TS. They were hoping to work out the truth between the two statements "People with TS find it difficult to learn" and "Tics are habits that got too deeply ingrained."
What they found, after testing about 100 people, is that people with Tourette's learn habits more slowly than "normal" people. This difference increases with tic severity; so those with really bad TS are really bad at learning habits, but those with mild TS find it relatively easy.
However, those with TS were actually slightly better with declarative learning tasks.
Ok, I admit...I had to look up what Declarative meant too!
"Declarative knowledge is knowledge that is declared, that is, communicated through language (including mathematical notication, sign language, and braille). Declarative knowledge does not necessarily involve understanding, practical application or logic." Reference
Right. So TSers have problems with learning how to do something, but find it easy to remember things without understanding them. This supports the good things about TS statement that often we have a photographic memory. But it does mean we don't necessarily understand what we remember.
This causes me a problem. This website is supposed to help TSers learn a bit more about their condition. This research suggests that, when I go into a doctor and say "Ah, yes the tics happen because...", I may not actually know what I'm talking about.
Yet, in Maths class I always found myself doing the opposite.
I could quite easily solve complex problems; but even if you held a gun to my
head I couldn't explain what I did. The answer would be right, but I
didn't know how I got there...I just did.
In fact, my whole problem throughout University was that I understood
what a telomere did, but I kept calling it an "end-thingy".
So I guess I don't have a typical case of TS...
HAH! No such thing!
I would suggest this is part of the reason why intellectual disability and TS often go together: kids may be able to repeat the words, but not know what they mean. Unfortunately, Marsh, Alexander, Packard, Zhu, Wingard, Quackenbush, and Peterson did not look into why this occurred. So I can't really suggest any chemical or genetic similarities between TS and this phenomenon...yet. Leave it with me a while.