Hyperlexia and ASD?

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Can't say if I'm "hyper"lexic but I was definitely strong with written language, had poor comprehension and struggle with verbal communication.

My family immigrated from China to Australia when I was about six, so I had no exposure to English before then.

Within a year or two of starting primary school I soon overtook my peers in terms of spelling and reading, and I always aced my spelling tests. I found it very easy to visually break up a word into smaller parts. Of course if the tests asked to define or use a word in a sentence, I usually get screwed. When encountering a new word, I always had good intuition on how to pronounce it and can usually spell it after seeing it once.

My comprehension eventually caught up. However I did notice something else too, whenever I was asked to read aloud to a group of people, I could easily verbalise what I'm reading with perfect pronounciation, but find that I'm not comprehending what I'm reading (I'm guessing it's because I can only concentrate on one thing at a time). So after I read a paragraph out aloud and someone asks me what I thought about it, I would just have a blank look on my face haha.

Nope.

However, my mom says that I knew all my colours at 18 months of age.

Hyperlexic and AS here.

And probably one of the hugest speed-readers you'll ever meet. D:

My first word was "Walrus". And I was told that I spoke it clearly.

A family friend babysat me. He was always showing me an alphabet book with pictures in it.
My family always has loved bringing up how I chose walrus over any other ordinary illustrated letter in the book.

Not daddy or mommy......but walrus.

How weird. I'm glad they have always gotten amusement out of the walrus deal.

I was always really into writing and spelling. But always avoided reading anything in it's entirety. I still only dig through articles and passages for info.

I can't get into reading a book because I slow down when it's a story and always want to re-read things over and over because I feel like I am going to miss some details to the story. Kinda sucks......but my attention span isn't very long when I am not interested in something. And real long when I get engrossed in something.

did not know word fascination was categorized til now....

I was hyperlexic in elementary school, but I have since realized that little details don't matter, and the bigger picture is more important. I'd now consider myself more on the dyslexic end of that spectrum.

I'm not sure when I began reading, but I remember being really frustrated in 1st grade when they were making me read the easy books because I couldn't pronounce the words in the harder books. I also had situations other times during school where I ended up being given books that I was the only one in the class allowed to read (and using me as the easiest person to fit in for the reading tests).

I also have by far the fastest reading speed the person testing me for asperger's has ever seen. He didn't believe me when I said it was my normal reading speed, but I do tend to read about 2000 wpm.


For my reading speed there's a solid story of "I didn't think myself odd". In 4th grade we had assigned reading to do in class. We were to put books back when we finished reading the section. I noticed that nobody else had finished reading when I finished, so I assumed that we were to read it twice, that way we'd be able to pick up more details. So I'd read it a second time, and would be the second student done. This logically meant that reading it twice was what we were always supposed to do - of course that's what everyone was doing. One day I was really bored with what we were reading so I decided to just read it once. So I finished, put down the book, and said "Done." It happened that the teacher was leaning against the wall in front of my desk, reading the same chapter he assigned to us. And reacted very surprised as he hadn't finished. I confirmed that I'd finished reading, and he started realizing quite how strong and fast of a reader I was.

But truthfully, until that point I thought that everyone just read everything twice before being done reading.


I liked my 4th grade teacher. He gave me books to read that he wouldn't let anyone else read because they were too advanced, he admitted I read fast and took advantage of this because he had to test our reading abilities multiple times throughout the year, and would just test me based off of the time available rather than alphabetically like he was "supposed to". He also realized logic puzzles were one of my strengths and explaining to other students what to do was one of my weaknesses and started having me explain the logic puzzles every friday.

I know an NT child of 6 who (according to her school report) is very good at reading and writing, and very good at socialising too.

Not sure if I was hyperlexive, but I was reading early and my reading comprehension was apparently high above my age level (one of the few things they actually tested me for as a kid) - but I had problems reading out loud, as I recall.

I still don't know if I'm AS - I see (from the no doubt highly reliable wikipedia page on hyperlexia) that one of the groups that have this are kids with 'autistic like traits that fade over time'. That might describe me.

I wasn't a precocious reader - I learnt to read at 6 when my teachers taught me - but within a short while I was way ahead in reading ability. But I didn't lag behind in comprehension relative to decoding, if anything my decoding lagged behind a bit because there were a lot of words in my written vocabulary but not my spoken one. When I tried to say those words, I'd pronounce them phonetically with a bit of a French accent (I learnt decoding in a French immersion class). But I knew exactly what they meant. My Dad would often ask me to define the words because he didn't understand my pronunciation, and he could guess the word from my definition.

Even now, I notice a subtle difference where my writing is better than my speech. Speech is a strength for me, but writing is an incredible strength for me. I can say things much more eloquently in writing than verbally (unless I rehearse beforehand). And when my speech breaks down due to stress, my writing is always one level better than my speech.