Any other type 3 hyperlexics out there?

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This has been an interesting thread to read. I have a 5 year old that reads -everything- (started sounding out words phonetically by 2 for sure and reading pretty fluently by 3) he really likes reading signs at the supermarket.. "Lunchmeat!" "Pie Filling!" heh..
I just found out about hyperlexia and am thinking this may describe my son. He has been diagnosed with expressive language disorder... specifically issues with W questions. He doesn't really carry on much of a conversation and is horrible with complex directions. We've had him evaluated, although not extensively, for autism or aspergers.. but no definitive answers
I brought up hyperlexia with his speech therapist at school.. she wasn't aware that he can read... and his teacher, who didn't know what hyperlexia was... (His teacher knows he can read because he has read random things around her, but when she's given him a passage (along with an illustration,) he just won't read it.
He brought a favorite book today, so we'll see how that goes.
As far as comprehension goes, i think he seems to comprehend stories that kids his age should understand, but i don't believe his comprehension matches with what he can read.
One website mentioned one of the "types" (more connected with aspergers) including problems with "visual-spatial learning disorder" i'm having a hard time understanding this.

I, too, have a son (just turned 5) who seems to exhibit traits of hyperlexia... although not diagnosed with aspergers or hyperlexia. We have been tested through the school district as well as a private speech-language clinic -- and both said he tested "borderline" but not low enough for any sort of therapy. Our pediatrician also noticed our son's interesting language usage and suggested we have him tested by a pediatric neurologist -- and her diagnosis was that he's simply a little "behind" in the area of expressive language. So we have gotten nowhere with getting any sort of help. His preschool teacher, however, notices something unusual -- as I do.

He taught himself the alphabet a month after he turned 2 and is pretty much teaching himself to read right now. (He has an older sibling who is learning to read.) In his language usage, he very frequently quotes lines from movies, books, or learning toys -- inserting the lines into everyday situations. For example, a video with a squirrel complaining, "I need a bath" -- my son, when frustrated, will say, "I need a bath." I would estimate more than 50% of what he says is a line from a book, movie, or learning toy. He has an excellent memory and can learn a song in about 2-3 listens. He also struggles with "W" questions, and refers to everyone as "him" regardless of gender.

Because he is SO affectionate and charming (pretty much everyone he meets adores him!), most people don't see anything "wrong" -- at this age, anyway. He loves hugs and playing with his siblings, and he often approaches children/people we don't know and says "Hi, what's your name?" with a big smile. However, anything he says after that is not understandable. So I am uncertain about a connection between hyperlexia (or even IF he's truly hyperlexic!) and Aspergers.

I accept him and love him as he is -- he is such a blessing in our lives! I just want to be able to help him any way I can...

yes --- and probably type 2

also have a bit of auditory processing disorder.... hearing fine, but not hearing words etc...

from a brief bit of googling I suspect I'm a type 2 Hyperlexic. I was reading at age 4 or so, LOVED encyclopedias by 5 or 6, unabridged renaissance literature at age 10. I was speaking complex full sentences by age 2 with adult inflection and so on though, so I'm not sure what to do with that. I have hypergraphia in spades. (I've wondered if I have Geschwind Syndrome.) My journals are well over 10000 typed pages long and I've fairly often had people say that my writing has moved them deeply or found that people have kept printouts or files of my schoolwork and distributed them to friends/colleagues because they liked it so much. (had a secretary at one college I attended tell me months after I arrived that my admissions essay, which she had no official reason to even read and which had been sent to someone else over 6 months ago, had moved her to tears.)

of course, I can't make casual conversation worth a damn.

1207bird, if you haven't already, i highly suggest finding a copy of _Reading Too Soon_ .. I bought mine on Amazon for about $25 (the people that originally sold it don't appear to now) .. lots of activities to find and strengthen weaknesses... suggestions etc.

I suspect I would be classified as type 2, as far as I can discern, the only differentiation between type 2 and 3 is being autistic or not. That seems a peculiar method to classify this condition, as it doesn't directly relate to the condition itself, but to other potential conditions. Off topic... anyway...

I had a massive vocabulary very early; my reading level was always miles ahead of my age bracket's norm. Presently, my comprehension is far greater than my expression, I'm unsure if that is related. I have not come across a word that I had to look up in many years, while I cannot say for certain; it is possible I just know them all by now (English). My skill with foreign languages is growing still too, somehow, through very limited exposure; I've come to be able to read on a basic level in numerous languages.

This is the aspect of it I find fascinating. I have taken instruction in French, Spanish, and Latin. I studied on my own Japanese and German. Nothing major in any of them, the equivalent to a semester class at most. And can break down and read multiple other languages.

Somehow, gaining any level of proficiency in a language increases my level of proficiency in all other languages a small degree too. Fascinating, I find it, personally. I’m off topic again, ha.

So yes, I'm probably type 2. There was difficulty gauging my abilities in school etc etc.

I suppose I would be considered type 2. I learned to read when I was 3 and still possess a great talent for reading and letters in general, but I'm definitely on the spectrum and my social skills were horrendous until I got much older. I've basically learned social skills by rote memorization of scripts and specific rules, the list of which is ever-expanding as I develop my skills further and encounter more new situations.

Have you heard of this guy? Maybe he's even on this site, I don't know. He mentioned type 3 hyperlexia on his tumblr a while back. I talked with him a bit online and he told me he's never been diagnosed with autism, although he has a lot of unusual traits and scientists seem unable to classify him. He's definitely some sort of savant, as you can see from his number skills and art.

http://sav2718.tumblr.com/
http://sav2718.deviantart.com/

Hi! I know this thread hasn't been active for about three years, but I wanted to revive it, because I think there hasn't been too much scientific research about hyperlexia.
So, here's the thing. Among the three types, I'd say I'm type two because, even though I haven't been officially diagnosed with ASD, I'm almost certain that I'm on the spectrum.
I'm also 99.999999% sure that I have hyperlexia, because I started reading when I was three. It was my teacher who noticed. Not even my mom knew I could read, but the teacher found it weird that I could read my classmates' names on their smocks, and other kinds of things, so she thought she should talk to my mom. I don't remember any of this (I only remember reading when I was 3 as a normal thing), but my mom bought me a Hansel and Grettel book, made me read it out loud and verified that, indeed, I could read.
From my point of view, hyperlexia is a special talent and not a disorder. It is often said that kids can be hyperlexic, but I guess hyperlexia is a feature that goes on for the rest of one's life.
I wonder if my ability to learn languages quite easily (maybe it's interesting for you to know that English is my second language, and I'm also quite good at French) is a characteristic of hyperlexia.
In addition, I get on my nerves when I see any orthographical mistake anywhere, no matter if it's in the Internet, on a newspaper... Wherever! Maybe this obsession with the written language also has to do with hyperlexia.
Does anybody have more information about this kind of things?
In my opinion, it would be good for scientists to research about hyperlexia in adults, as I guess there has been research about dyslexia in adults.

What's wrong with being hyperlexic? Being exceptionally good at reading is one thing I'm very proud of, and I got a lot of praise and support from teachers when I was a kid. But people here are going on like it's a disease or something.

Also I never knew hyperlexia came in different "types".

Yes, lostonearth35. If you want to search information about the three types, you just have to google the word 'hyperlexia'

Hm, never heard of this term. Yeah, I learned to read at age three and was absolutely obsessed with it for a while; it was pretty much all I ever did. In elementary school I would always tell the other students how to pronounce words they were stuggling to read aloud. The teachers didn't like that.

My reading comprehension has never been great, though; I often have to re-read pages to try to understand what's going on. No doubt my NLD plays a part in that as well. It's still easier to follow books than movies, though, because both NLD and APD hinder movie enjoyment.

I think I have type two hyperlexia. I learned to read at age 3 and was always ahead of my class in terms of reading and spelling. I had good reading comprehension, too. My grade one teacher would have me use a different workbook from the other kids, which embarrassed me because I wanted to be like everyone else. I would sometimes pretend not to know a word when I did in order to avoid having attention drawn to me. I was a very shy, fearful kid.

My second-grade teacher let me go to the third-grade classroom for reading and spelling, but I never felt embarrassed by it. I liked that I had a privilege nobody else in my class did.

Yeah, I was always ahead of my class in terms of reading. I remember, when I was 5, the teacher used to play a game for my classmates to learn to read. I don't remember the mechanics of the game, but the only thing I remember is that she wouldn't let me look at the blackboard until she told me too, because she knew I would read the words before everyone else did.

I just discovered this concept of Type 3 hyperlexia a few days ago as I was reading about the controversial idea of people "outgrowing autism." Given that people who know me intimately or knew me when I was a kid see at least a history of autistic traits in me and maybe a couple lingering ones, but those who know me more casual see me as just another neurotypical/allistic (including some who have autistic relatives), I've long been wondering whether I really was "different" or not, and if so, if there was a name for it. Because I never felt that autistic-spectrum conditions quite fit: they were closer than a lot of other possibilities, but I just couldn't relate to the persistent sensory issues, problems with body language and eye contact, lining up toys, or other classic stuff.

But then I read this:
https://www.thenhf.com/hyperlexia-separ ... ffert-m-d/

And this sounds like the closest thing I've ever seen to my own developmental history. I wasn't as freakishly early a reader as described in many of these profiles, perhaps because I had a more average IQ or more typical neurology in other ways than these other profiles. But I learned the alphabet with ease at age 3, listening in on lessons intended for my older sister. I read pretty well by age 4, and really enjoyed reading whatever sign or label was around as well as things on TV, but didn't know that it was reading because I thought it was something that had to be taught in class. But my most formal training was asking for encyclopedia articles to be read to me and paying attention to the words and pages during the process. My siblings learned to read in first grade, but ultimately became better readers by high school because they devoured novels. (That sounds a bit like the classically non-autistic Type 1 hyperlexic profile, where the peers catch up, except slightly early reading wasn't the only weird thing about me as a little kid.) I, on the other hand, preferred factoids and the structural aspects of language to the literature emphasis that became dominant later on, and didn't become an avid hobby reader until an NLD/Aspie friend in college pointed me toward the world of psychology and social sciences.

I had notable autistic traits when young, including some signs of sensory issues: visible discomfort with noise expressed in ways never expressed by my more typical siblings, discomfort with receiving affection spontaneously (but not giving it to those who asked - consistent with the Type 3 hyperlexic's typical or nearly-typical social function in their inner circle), and notable moments of seeming indifference to pain. I also had a strong rigidity around rules and strong specific fears for a while. But, consistent with the Type 3 hyperlexic profile, that stuff cleared up sometime in elementary school - by the time I was 9, particularly. (The cases I saw described cleared up their sensory and rigid behavior issues around 6 or 7, but (a) they probably had ASD therapies to try to help with that stuff and (b) they also started reading and learning letters and numbers even earlier than I did, so may have just been smarter and faster-developing.) I was never diagnosed with any learning disorder until the ADHD explosion, however, because the mild end of the autism spectrum and things resembling it were not really big in the popular consciousness until the new millennium. I was just seen as weird, problematic, and was almost swept up in the late-80s psych fad of blaming all strange and neurotic behaviors on mistreatment by parents.

I also never had problems with eye contact and understanding body language, which is consistent with this profile, although I seemed to have higher-order cognitive empathy issues (basically social communication disorder) that made me not appreciate just how important the stuff people communicate with body language really is. And just like the profile mentions, the mild to moderate social issues remained for longer. Over time, though, I became less literal and gradually figured out how to behave more appropriately in social contexts - for instance, when to play pretend and when to be serious, which of the possible meanings were meant, how to converse without monologuing and boring the heck out of people, and eventually, though this wasn't until early adulthood already, why being blunt is both offensive and usually unnecessary. I did have some social issues within my family, but I got along very well with my younger sister...perhaps only she and my grandfather who asked me for hugs were my "inner circle" in my early pseudo-Aspie days.

So, it was refreshing to see this confirmation that having autistic traits when little but growing up to be neurotypical really is a thing that is often mistaken for outgrowing an autism-spectrum condition, or is perhaps a borderland condition between the autism spectrum and classic allism/neurotypicality, and sounds an awful lot like how I grew up. That mostly kills the "I was just a self-centered brat as a child" hypothesis, and explains why I've often felt a kinship or developed close friendships and intimate relationships with neurodiverse people (e.g., Aspies, obsessive-compulsives, NLDers, etc.) as an adult, even though I currently function as neurotypical. I've also read that hyperlexics may have excess activity in parts of the left brain that are underactive in dyslexics, and excessive left-brainedness without a right-brain deficiency could explain some other mysteries, like a big split between performance and verbal IQ at age 8 without NLD symptoms like dysgraphia and dyspraxia, or why I'm still "a Vulcan" as my family puts it, understanding social situations with a heavy reliance on logic, whereas most of my fellow neurotypicals process these things emotionally and intuitively and trust those judgments.

Hyperlexia, defined simply as learning to read before kindergarten as in this Darold Treffert's work, does not seem to be a disease, in any meaningful way, but in many but not cases it does seem to correlate with other neurological quirks - in the Type 2 variety, it correlates with the autism spectrum, and in the Type 3 variety, with autism-spectrum traits in early developmental stages that eventually disappear as the child matures. Any quirk, disabling or not, can potentially be a disadvantage in the smooth flow of social life, if only because many NTs tease or bully or snub those who don't fit their norms or expectations. Even people who just have very high IQs and no other neurological quirks, or come from a different economic or cultural background from their peers, or have a different sexual orientation or gender identity, can run into problems for these reasons. So something doesn't have to be a disease at all to bring about problems: it only has to be culturally devalued or undervalued. But the quasi-autistic developmental delays of Type 3 hyperlexia can bring about more problems, while they persist, than being teased for not fitting in.

Sorry, I haven't posted in a while it's just I ussually posted at school, but I'm Hyperlexic that I have a extremely high reading level, but I didn't read early I was really interested in reading till third grade, but when I was interested I would read for hours at a time, just training my lexical skills. I probably would get classified at hyperlexia for my extreme ability for reading.