Hyperlexia

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What would I say? DITTO to everything but I started with father's books, he is a doctor, I started liking mithology and fantasy at advenced ages 12 years old ahead, but I can't read a Harry Potter Series for instance because I feel I can predict next chapter, if you read arabyan legends you'll know why, but I like Tolkien and all the Inklings. When I mentioned kids after I grew up (I am not good at english, I am not an english speaker so I was thinking in Portuguese and writting in English), what I meant was adolescents- 13 years old ahead.

By the time I was 16 I knew I was autistic but I thought it was common. I remeber that when I was in the 4th grade a teacher drew a cube and was not perfect like I imagined a cube should be. I said she was a lier and tried to draw a cube on the board, she said I was was "stubborn and pedantic", something worse happened to me at age 11 at school, and since I have the ability of "losing my voice", I stoppped talking at school for 6 months and they got surprised when they realized "I could talk". I remeber that. Reading books and collecting data, writing compulsively is what's left, but I can read technical books in a long velocity which doesn't happen with fanatsy or novels, yes words are figures like numbers. And that's why I had to go to the dictionaries and slice them in pieces. I have always collected pieces things that were broken since I was a kid, left behind or lost, like leaves, letters, rocks, pieces of glasses or walls, a mystery, I still do it.

The fact that I am never reading the ac books have became a problem because I read what I want, when I want, and I have programmed the books I will read next year. I don't know you're age. I am 21, and in the third college (unfinished) so to the outside world I have terrible problems, just like I had for not having sweet sixteen, or never being kissed. Everybody thinks that's a disease .

The chart says high/low, as opposed to highER/lowER. ANd YEAH, I thought it was a GIVEN that kanners could have BETTER social skills than AS. My argument has never been that AS is better in all ways than kanners, but rather that certain ways are more narrowly defined in AS. In any even't, one of my biggest complaints is that the unions and relative coverage aren't properly shown in that chart.

BTW I really can't remember not being able to read either. I STILL remember kids in the first grade trying to read. They struggled to read characters while I read words and I generally got the inflection right also.

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.[/quote]


Thank you SO MUCH, you have helped me a lot understand that hyperlexia is not a category of autism. And that's why my brother is an NT and I keep the same way because I am an aspie.

Whoa. I fit most of those symptoms, especially being able to read well at an early age. I was 2-3 years ahead of everyone in terms of reading ability, but not necessarily comprehension. I just read and didn't understand what was being read at the time, but now I do. It was more a matter of age at that time, accompanied by problems understanding abstract concepts. I took things literally.
I basically think in words and pictures, and don't remember a time when I couldn't read.

MR is mental retardation.



First off, understand that this is the mother in me, and not the AS in me. I feel the approach of teaching for students with hyperlexia should be different. Rather than this rote memorization that most autistic children get, I think their skills should be honed and then teaching go through that. In that sense, it would be easier on all hyperlexic children to be classified differently from Kanner's or Asperger's. This would also help cultivate training in the area of teachers and therapists for their specific talents.

English was my second language. (My first was German.) I went from knowing no English in kindergarten to reading at fifth grade level a year later. I was in a "special education" class in first grade, but learned more that year that at any time since. Some of my classmates were older than I was, but couldn't read as well as I could. My kindergarten teacher thought I was hyperactive and put me on Ritalin, which turned out to be a bad idea. In first and second grade, I had great teachers who encouraged me and believed I was smart. As a result, I was able to read well above grade level. By sixth grade, I tested at tenth grade level in reading and twelfth grade level in vocabulary.

Literally since birth I have been obsessed with letters and numbers, so yes I am hyperlexic...I would say it's "built in" with my Autism.

I also was hyperlexic when I was a kid. It's supposedly very rare in females, but I don't know how much I buy that. They probably just say that because AS/autism are more common in males. But I was the typical hyperlexic/Aspie/Nonverbal Learning Disorder child: I taught myself how to read at age four and I could memorize things with incredible speed, but I couldn't cut with scissors, tie my shoes, or hop on one foot. I also couldn't sound out words like other children. I just would have to memorize a word by what it looked like. Spelling was hard for me until age 8, because I had zero comprehension of the phonetics of the English language. I would have all of the right letters, but they would be jumbled inside, more evidence that I just merely memorized the words.
-OddDuckNash99-

Interesting enough, it's commonly said that those who have hyperlexia improve significantly at ages 4-5 years.

The first mention of that age I found and I wonder if it's true?

I had an unexplained big improvement in the areas of receptive language/auditory understanding/something like that and interaction with environment when I was 5.

I think this is probably not really enough reason to change the classification system. People expect these things to reflect reality even if they're not exactly intended to, which is why the Dewey decimal system is offensive and why Borges' list of classes of animals* from an imaginary Chinese Encyclopedia is an obvious joke even though it's possible to imagine situations in which it would be somewhat useful.

I just read (inattentively) a book, When Babies Read: A Practical Guide to Help Young Children With Hyperlexia, Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism, by Audra Jensen, the mother of a hyperlexic autistic boy. She uses the terms 'hyperlexia' and 'autism' interchangably. It's an early-education manual of methods for honing hyperlexia (getting babies who are obsessed with text to read with comprehension) and then using the reading skill to improve spoken language, teach basic skills like potty-training and dressing oneself, and teach appropriate social-behavior and 'theory of mind' stuff. Plus bits about convincing schoolteachers to accomodate for the child by giving him written instruction, checklists, and reminder-notes about behavior.

That last bit, convincing schoolteachers to accomodate, would be easier if the classification were changed -- moving 'hyperlexia' up a tier into a disorder of its own would give the need to address it specifically more authoritative force. Though it strikes me in this case as tragically silly to need to do that. You shouldn't need the DSM to get people to understand that hyperlexia, a feature of autism, is tremendously important and useful if it's present.

*(a) those belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) domesticated, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) strange, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in this classification, (i) terrified, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camel hair brush, (l) etcetera, (m) which have just broken the water jug, (n) which, from a distance, look like flies.

I'm so happy to learn about hyperlexia. It sounds just like me. I don't remember ever being unable to read -- my mother says she realized I could read when I was two. Yet I remember the terrible struggle of trying to make my speech intelligible by my family. It was so frustrating to have thoughts I could not express!

Huh. Thought I had posted in this thread... Must've been another hyperlexia discussion. It's actually the only "label" I've ever recieved... When I started public school, it was the late 70's in rural New Mexico and Asperger's wasn't even a thing. The school waffled back and forth about whether I should be in the gifted program or special needs, and my parents were encouraged to take me in for a psychiatric evaluation for hyperlexia, significant social delay, selective mutism, etc. I was skipped a couple of grades for academics, then almost immediately held back again to 'my' grade for 'social development'. Parents didn't buy into that entire 'psych eval' thing, and I wasn't failing academically, so it just ended up going ignored.

I have aspects of dyslexia and hyperlexia. Bad in the olden days when I was 3 years young and much younger for identifying letters and numbers, I had all the symptoms of hyperlexia (but now we know its autism related). Yes, I could read early, but it doesn't mean I'm smart in any means. My IQ's have been consistently in the Borderline Intellectual Functioning range. And now, its getting progressively harder to read, even simple words.