Hyperlexia

Post Reply New Topic

I was wondering if a propensity towards outlandish storytelling would be concidered a part of hyperlexia...I always hear that folk withAS have a difficulty lying...well as a kid I had the extreme opposite problem...where I could not help myself..and I had difficulty distinguishing truth from fantasy...(I outgrew it)...but it was a big part of my disorderly childhood development.....

is that part of hyperlexia or something else entirely?

Huh. That's interesting. I take it "Visual Spatial Motor Disorder" is basically NLD. Although it would be odd for NLD to be high on "social perception" (maybe higher than AS but not high in general). Do you know whether "Language Learning Disorder" is supposed to be something like specific language impairment (SLI), or whether it is dyslexia? (which is not really a language learning disorder, but would parallel the placement of NLD)

Actually, the chart IS a bit off. TECHNICALLY, it is saying that AS social skills can be a bit higher than normal, to much lower than normal. It says that hyperlexia is about a bit higher to a bit lower than normal. The fact is, according to the DSM, the circle for LLD should be smaller, Autism should be larger, AS and VSMD should intersect with autism, HIGH social should be farther up the scale. Where AS, VSMD, and autism intersect, they could label that HFA.

Sometimes the numbers that we count are not like the numbers that you see. Number 8 can be confusing, in his mind he knows what's eight he can see 8 bricks or 8 birds but when he sees the image of 8 maybe he can think of it as 2 number threes sticked up. So number 8 is actually number six. I know it's confusing that some can calculate in their minds but not on the paper, but it depends on each individual, a buttefluy can be number 2 and a chair can be number 4. Hyperlexic people have a wonderful imaginations that's why they are called "story tellers" what I HATE. If they say they are seeing, it's because they are seeing and not lying or beiong esquizo, it's just a different way to see. When they grow up they learn how to count with real numbers, real equations, that's why it's called down-to-eath autism, at achool we try to do their numbers but sometimes they can not resist and we do it our way, so themath teacher comes and says "where did you get this answer from? you cheated the test. " And when we are kids we don't know what's going on and don't need to give explanations.

I have been a compulsive reader since I was very young. I had an early interest in books and always read several years above grade level. To this day, anything related to books, writing and word-related activities (crossword puzzles, word jumbles and trivia) appeals to me. I was very fascinated with numbers as well when I was younger, but now am only average in math. However, I am interested in statistical information, such as times achieved by Olympic champions.

The story teller is not that we lie, I will give you an exemple. When I was a kid I told my mom nonsenless things: "The stars sleep on the moon's bed" I probably read, heard or counted something that had to do with it, I don't remeber at all, she wrote this on her diary. So hyperlexic are always telling things nobody understands. That's not that they are liers. For exemple, if a hyperlexic kid thinks that number 4 is a chair because it has four legs, when four people come to his/her house he says "there's a chair in the room". It's not a rule, all kids are different and have different ways to count just like aspergers have different ways to see the world. Hyperlexic love day-dreaming and they distort the world and believe in their own reality.

Here is a girl "close" to hyperlexic but I don't think she's autistic or hyperlexic, she doesn't have hyperlexia diagnosed or autism. But I see many traces in her.

http://www.akiane.com

Ok, I edited the post because I posted some personal fact and experience, and those things are not supposed to be posted here.

Heh. Well, if, as you say, nearly everybody with hyperlexia also has HFA, making the trait into its own little syndrome would be silly.

If there are a significant number of people like me, though, it seems sensible. I do not fit diagnostic criteria for HFA, and fit the ones for Asperger's in a minimal sort of way, but those top three listed for 'hyperlexia' in the original post are quite true of me.

I don't remember having any special fascination with letters and numbers standing alone, but I could read before I was potty-trained. One of my earliest memories is of a cloth book entitled 'Baby Animals' which had simple pictures and text 'Sheep. Lamb.' 'Dog. Puppy.' 'Cow. Calf,' and one tiny 'page' in the middle that read 'Machine wash cold. Tumble dry. Do not bleach.' and puzzled me enormously because I had no clue what that meant or why the book had this odd-sized colourless page, so unlike the rest of it, in the middle. I have no memory of not being able to read. I was shocked when I entered Kindergarten and discovered that other children couldn't do it, I thought people were born with it. I tested at the top of the scale ("College level and beyond") for reading, at the age of six. I liked the journal "Nature." Though great literature escaped me; I'd read it and enjoy it, but re-reading it as an adult I realized I was missing the point spectacularly.

Where did he say that hyperlexia was HFA? My oldest son is definitely not HFA. His language has advanced enough to not be MR, but he's more moderate autism, or classic autism. And he is definitely hyperlexic. To me, I feel that there is most likely a need to put hyperlexia as a subset to autism. There is still a great spectrum within hyperlexia.

That in general that description sounds like me. The topic of Mathematics for me is a complicated one, I can add and subtract subconsciously and just 'know' the answer, but when I try to do it consciously I usally have to try again as the number's off.

Once I learned to read at 4 yrs. you couldn't stop me. I remember my kindergarten teacher commented that I should be reading other books, since the only ones in the classroom were too easy for me... by the time I was 8 I could read and comprehend books that 15-16 yr olds were reading.

I also remember being proud that I could spell some words that my teachers couldn't! (when I was 9)

I have always enjoyed statistical data, making chart after chart of 'useless data' as my mother says. If the chart's not just right I would often redo it.

The one main difference with me is that although I love reading stories, I just cant make them up in writing or saying them... I just can't, I only have a 'concrete' imagination. If I could make up stories, I wouldn't be the same person.

I don't really know if I'm hyperlexic, but there are certain things that seem to fall into the category that I have always excelled in, above my peers.

He didn't. Daniel said:

"Nearly all people with this have Autistic Disorder (I don't know about the prevalence with Asperger's, but I haven't seen it mentioned), that's why it lists symptoms that are the same as Autism in many ways (the people who have these symptoms but don't have Autism seem to have a less severe form of Autism). "

Putting 'HFA' in place of 'Autistic Disorder' was my error.



What is MR?

I am puzzled as you why you conclude that hyperlexia ought to be classified as a form of autism -- I would suppose that for you, hyperlexia is a trait associated with autism. In what ways is it useful to suppose it is its own separate form of autism?

Seems like putting 'Hyperlexia' into the tier that currently houses Kanner's and Asperger's etc. would be taxonomic bloat. If nearly all people who are hyperlexic already fit into one of the existant categories and don't exhibit significant differences from others in their category, it'd be useless and confusing bloat. If there are a significant number of hyperlexics who, like myself, don't quite fit the diagnostic criteria for any autism-spectrum disorder, or if there are a significant and consistant differences between hyperlexic autistic people and other autistic people, it might be useful.

~

Anyway, I don't remeber my childhood when I was really little. So I only know what people told me. But like you I grew up believing all kids were like me and that's the mistake all aspies do by thinking people think alike, but they don't. As an adult I am trying to think on the things I said when I was a kid. My mother has a diary of my sayings and people told me I had a very sofisticated vocabullary. I don't rember paying attention to any class and only drawing, usually swrirls as I still do. When I liked the teacher's voice I payed attention but still didn't look at him/her without being foreced or called by attention, sometimes I was called 3 times.

Before age 7 I only remeber objects, places and ADULTS. My mother had a diary of the things I said and I try to interpretate them, like the words butterfly, chairs and stuff. Like I told you hyperlexia only happens when we are kids and it stops, like I can't teach myself any new language as I could when I was a kid but the habit of reading everything and always thinking about numbers never goes away, my brother acts like an NT and we acted alike when we were kids. I thought it was a new "label" of autism since it was described as down-to-earth autism in a site, so I was like "one day I will be NT". I have always known I was autistic, but I never got intrestead in understanding my own reality untill college, parents and pressure showed up. Yes, hyperlexia is associated with AS or HFA. I have an asperger diagnose for the moment, I live in Brazil, but there are things in me that are not asperger, that are more like HFA but I don't have a low IQ and in most of sites it's a criteria for being HFA, in Brazil I was told I was not an HFA because of the IQ. So the IQ is what's intriguing for me right now. I live in an isolated state where I can't get contact someone who works with autism. So that's why I am on this board.

I relate very closely to this. I too have synesthesia, and was very precocious in my reading, to the point where if I told you how early I started no one would believe me. (Let's just say I could spell 'lollipop' by my second birthday.) When I look at a sign, I automatically read all the words on it; I can't help myself. I read a minimum of a book a day. My first real big one was The Hobbit, at five. I count everything as well. Maybe I'm hyperlexic then. I never knew that was atypical for Asperger's!

But the more research I do now, the more common I realize my ridiculous language skills are. I also read that almost all children with it are on the autism spectrum, though I don't remember the source.

LostInSpace,

They don't say, but I'm betting it's Semantic-Pragmatic Disorder, which is "mild" Autism for the most part, just like NLD is "mild" Asperger's [in many ways].

2ukenkerl,

This chart isn't compared to "normal" people, it's comparing the various disorders against themselves. Remember: Asperger's can have just as great a social deficit as Autism, it just usually manifests differently in appearance, but the outcome is the same.

Electric_Kite,

I meant that all people with Hyperlexia are also Autistic, but not all people who are Autistic have Hyperlexia. It's very rare to have Hyperlexia without an ASD.

I don't rememember what I thought about the other kids. I remember being given a workbook in Kindergarten which said 'Danilian Handwriting' on the cover, reading this out and asking the teacher what 'Danilian' meant. She baffled me by refusing to answer, making a dissaproving hissing sound and narrowing her eyes. Probably not very autistic of me to understand that and be frightened by it, which I was. It was my grandmother who got from 'the teacher is mean' to the story and informed me that the teacher was probably annoyed because I could read and that meant I'd be bored and disruptive for most of the year. Which turned out to be true; I spent most of Kindergarten pinching myself and other children with the spring-loaded jaw of my plastic toy crocodile. And to this day remain bitter that the teacher 'permanently confiscated' (overtly stole, dammit) that toy.



Well, it 'stopped' in the sense that as I aged, my reading became less and less remarkable. If I am the only thing you're looking at, nothing has changed. Apart from having much much better understanding of certain types of fiction. I still tend to read about a thousand pages of something every week (more than as a child) and while at thirty-three there is nothing to read that's 'beyond my age-level' people remain startled at the volume and speed of my reading, and at the fact that I read a bunch of dense stuff for fun.

I got you. This'd make Hyperlexia fall into the category of 'traits strongly associated with autism' and not the category of 'autism spectrum disorders.'

What I (obsessive cataloger) feel the urge to poke at is this idea that it might, and perhaps should, be bumped up the tree into 'defining characteristic of a specific autism spectrum disorder.'

You're correct. It's actually listed under "associated features" for Autistic Disorder in the DSM-IV-TR.

It's not there with Asperger's, but from all of the latest info it appears to be associated with all of the various ASDs (Asperger's as in the DSM-IV-TR is quite tentative); I'm sure they'll add all of the additional and verified information in the DSM-V.

To the original poster:

Autism isn't scarier than your life has already been if you're found to have it. You could have Asperger's plus Hyperlexia, Autism plus Hyperlexia, Nonverbal Learning Disorder plus Hyperlexia, Semantic-Pragmatic Disorder plus Hyperlexia, but none of these change what you already can do, and what you already are. Plus, all of the above will give you a valid reason for any problems you may have in relation to your schooling and the expectations others place on you as they're all disabling conditions in the ways they outline.