A question for hyperlexic folks

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Just a quick little Q&A for the hyperlexics here.
How is it that you learned to read so early, what were the circumstances that you were able to pick up such a skill?
Also, I was wondering if you had a comparable increase in early verbal ability.

I don't think I learned to read amazingly early, by kindergarten certainly, but I read too easily and things don't sink in. I understand this is one of the downsides of Hyperlexia. I try to read slower and my mind starts to wander. I read in a book about teaching right brained children that you just have to read everything three times.

Check out all the characteristics this shares with ASD's

http://www.hyperlexia.org/aha_what_is.html

and this: I didn't know some consider it a subset of autism
http://www.hyperlexia.org/aha_winter9697.html

I don't know if I am hyperlexic, but I will stick my nose in anyway...

I learned to read aged 2. I'm not actually sure how. I think I was just naturally wired for it.

Like Aimless, though, I suck at taking in information. I seem to have to read things over and over, or actively memorize them in separate points one after the other.

I'm sure if I learned to read that early my mother would have remembered. I think reading beyond age level is key though and I was reading at a 5th grade level after 1st grade. When I was a child there was no such label but the additional characteristics describe me well for the most part. You don't hear much about it in relation to autism. I wonder how many here read very early or very well?

I was definitely reading to myself by the age of three, not sure when I actually started.
You ask about the circumstances - my mother said she set out to make sure that we could do so, this way we could sit and read quietly, without bothering her. Her duty was done. But I'm not sure if this is actually hyperlexia, as my little brother was doing it 17 years later, reading happily at the same age.

She didn't really encourage me much after that, other than providing the books. She never discussed the content. I remember picking up a copy of "Animal Farm" at the age of 10, reading it, and thinking it was a nice story about animals with odd bits, and a really meaningless ending. It wasn't until about a decade later that I realised it was a commentary on socialism. So without guidance, the reading was sometimes really without context!

Another annoying thing was that as I spent most of my time reading, without anyone to talk to, I had a large vocabulary, a large part of which I didn't know how to pronounce properly. Lol.

Well, I was reading before 4yo, and talking around 10mo. I always figured I wanted to learn, and saw books as a good way. I guess I felt I should communicate, and spoke. When I was about 9yo(NO standard microcomputer company existed yet, the first MPU didn't even hsve any competitors yet, M/S hadn't started yet, and all microcomputers were merely hobbyist curiousities), I wanted a TYPEWRITER for my birthday! I got a nice smith corona cartridge typewriter. That shows you where I WAS going. For a while, I had EVERYTHING planned out!

My vocabulary was always pretty large for my age.

I was a fluent reader at four, but I'm not sure when I actually learned, since I don't remember ever not knowing how. I usually estimate three-and-a-half.

I learned to read because my mother read to me, and I easily made the connection between spoken and written words.

Yes, I had a corresponding increase in speech--not really vocabulary so much as utility. I think I must have really learned what language was all about when I first was exposed to the simpler written version rather than the complicated task of filtering and interpreting audible speech. At first I had been using delayed echolalia (the functional sort) and pattern-recognition to fit the right words into the situation; once I learned to read, I learned to make up my own sentences to say what I wanted to say. I know I had full use of self-generated speech by six, because I remember asking questions in first grade.

I learned how to read at age three. My father got me started by showing me various words in the newspaper, and I was off and running pretty much on my own after that. By the time I was in 1st grade, I was reading at a 5th grade level and was able to skip the 2nd grade altogether. For some reason, it took me longer to learn how to write, and my handwriting has always been pretty atrocious.

This is similar to how I learned to read and I have had similar difficulties with my handwriting. I had glue ear for the first three years of my life and had a significant speech delay despite speech therapy (I had been misdiagnosed as profoundly deaf). I wasn't deaf all the time, however, as glue ear comes and goes. During the times when I was responsive to sound my mum would read to me. When I was about 2-3 I was obsessed with a particular book of nursery rhymes which she read to me repeatedly, and another book which contained the word "look" on each page accompanied by pictures of increasing size and complexity. I remember linking the meaning and sound of the word look to the printed word on the page and then doing the same for the book of nursery rhymes. This was about the same time I started saying my first words. When I was 3 I was properly diagnosed with glue ear and fitted with grommitts to clear the fluid. I began speaking normally shortly afterwards and soon had a vocabulary that was very advanced for my age. By the time I started school, I'd read most of Rohld Dahls' childrens books, had an illustrated medical textbook and a small collection of popular science books from a series intended for adults. I didn't know what handwriting was though as I'd only ever read printed text. Even although I'm usually pretty good at things involving fine hand eye coordination, my handwriting was the worst in my class from primary one until the beginning of secondary school. I took up celtic calligraphy as a hobby for a few months which helped me catch up.

I went from Go Dog, Go! to the 1963 Encyclopedia Brittanica's in the hall around 3~4 I think, I know I turned 4 while reading through the 63's cause I was looking up what the president and election and stuff was (Sept 84), and couldn't figure out why they didn't mention the ones in the book on TV.

Found the science stuff much more interesting, dinosaurs were an obsession for a while, then I found a book on Relativity in the hall shelf, and learned that we have two theories for one Universe around 6 or so.

I was far more excited to get a library card than my driver's license.

My parents tell me I was reading somewhere between 2 and 3, and at a high level. I've always been verbose, though I actually had a stutter for a while as a kid. Language is just something that comes very naturally to me, I can't really place why. Like Electric Spaghetti, my handwriting was, and still is, pretty bad.

Those of you who read very early and well beyond grade level, do you have trouble with comprehension? I've been told comprehension refers to what you are able to recall directly after and not what you understand while you are reading. My comprehension scores were always lower than my reading speed and so are my son's. From what I've read about Hyperlexia, this is one of the things that make it a disorder. What do you think about all the characteristics that are like autism and why do you think they are there? Do you think hyperlexia is really high functioning autism with a comorbid of hyperlexia? I don't know if anyone read the links I posted earlier. It's pretty curious I think.

That's the definition of hyperlexia--reading ability ahead of comprehension ability. Otherwise, you're just a precocious reader.

My reading ability was probably college-level by six, and "able to read anything written" by nine. My comprehension ability, on the other hand, was at about the same level as my peers' at age six, and about high school level by age nine. By fifteen or so, my comprehension ability had caught up with my reading ability and I was able to understand anything I could decode, if I also had the background knowledge (which I could gain by reading). By then, my standard operating procedure, when I wanted to learn something, was to start with a children's book to get the basics, then work up to adult and then professional-level material.

Technically, since I can now comprehend everything I can read, I am no longer hyperlexic.

Hyperlexia can make you seem smarter than you really are, when you are able to read things that you cannot yet understand. Most children tend to be able to understand anything they have the ability to read because their reading ability progresses at about the same speed as their comprehension; not so with hyperlexic ones, who tend to be fascinated with the process of reading itself long before they become able to understand the information.

Why do you think hyperlexia has accompanying traits that are so similar to autism?
In addition, some children who are hyperlexic may exhibit the following characteristics:

* Learn expressive language in a peculiar way, echo ro memorize the sentence structure without understanding the meaning (echolalia), reverse pronouns
* Rarely initiates conversations
* An intense need to keep routines, difficulty with transitions, ritualistic behavior
* Auditory, olfactory and / or tactile sensitivity
* Self-stimulatory behavior
* specific, unusual fears
* Normal development until 18-24 months, then regression
* strong auditory and visual memory
* Difficulty answering "Wh--" questions, such as "what," "where," "who," and "why"
* Think in concrete and literal terms, difficulty with abstract concepts
* Listen selectively, appear to be deaf

Taught myself to read in kindergarten, stopped doing readers part way through my first year of school because I had surpassed the readers the school had. Read Dickens at 8 but really had no comprehension of it. Probably could have progressed much further and more quickly if my main childhood obsession hadn't been Enid Blyton novels.