Anyone with hyperlexia?

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I just found out that I probably have it. I unwittedly mentioned it on my autism assessment and said it is something atypical of autism, but it turns out its actually a thing. It makes sense that I was so ahead at reading in primary school and why I am doing so well in college at written assessments. I find my thoughts are so much more collected when I can write them down.

Yes, i would say that Hyperlexia is perhaps one of your super powers.

I would say that dyslexia and problems with short term memory are more common among the ASD community.

I'm not sure if I have it. I don't know where the cut-off is. I learned to read when I started school but my mom didn't try to teach me before then so I don't know if I could have learned earlier. My reading level went up very quickly and I was scoring college level on vocabulary tests in 5th grade. Writing is hard for me but that's because I have trouble focusing.

I'm not sure I know enough about this to be replying here, but I am anyway

I don't know if I do or not. I know I could read pretty good before preschool. It was one of the main things that had my teacher suggest I be tested for the gifted school. In elementary school bench mark tests, I scored high school reading levels, then college levels.

In children it's mostly about reading young, right? Im curious, what does hyperlexia mean in adults? It it something that carries over, impacting you as you grow, or is it just related to what you did as a child? I could probably look it up, but I'm being lazy. I know. I suck.

I was never diagnosed with hyperlexia, but I had all the signs of having it. I grew up in the 1970s, so autism wasn't on anyone's mind if they were trying to figure me out. Everyone just thought I was a really smart kid.

I don't remember learning how to read, I just remember I could always do it really well. My older sister says when I was 3 or 4 years old, I could surprise people with my ability to be handed a newspaper or book meant for an adult, and be able to read entire sentences out loud, correctly pronouncing all the words and placing proper emphasis on all the syllables as I went along. On top of that, if I was asked to spell a particular word, I'd always spell it correctly. I regret that I never entered any spelling bees when I was a kid, I could have been a champion.

So where was the problem? Well, while I could read lots of complex words out loud, and correctly spell them when asked, I couldn't always comprehend what some of those complex words meant. There were occasions in school where a teacher would have me read some paragraphs from an advanced book, and then ask me questions to demonstrate whether I really comprehended what I'd read. I could figure out what most of the individual words meant, but when having to string a lot of them together in multiple sentences and paragraphs, I'd often have trouble, and would get frustrated when I couldn't convince the teacher that I understood what I'd read in some meaningful way.

While I was very gifted in my ability to read, pronounce and spell words at a young age, my reading comprehension skills never reached that same high level. By the time I got to high school, I had developed much better reading comprehension skills, but so had all my other classmates who had followed the more typical (and slower) path of learning to read and comprehend written language.

^ I wasn't so great when it came to reading comprehension either. I struggled to practically apply things I had read and also retain the information long term. I used to test well, if the test came quick enough after memorizing facts or whatever, but shortly after the information was largely gone. Same with reading for fun, I would often forget what I had read earlier in a book, and then have to reread... it could be problematic. Ultimately being able to read young wasn't a huge benefit to me. Messed up part, now my short term memory is lacking as well as long term. Doh.

I stumbled upon this term somewhere when I was self-diagnosing. But I'm curious, as FleaOfTheChill - does it mean anything in adults?

I learned reading on my own when I was about 4 years old. I was surprised to find out that if a child learns to read quickly, without parents being even aware of it, it may be a sign of autism. It was precisely my story. My grandma's favorite anecdote is that when I was 4, I started to read out a page from teletext efortlessly (it was early 2000s). She thought I learned it by rote. But then she asked me to read something else, and I read it as well. Apparently that's how my family found out I could read.

I've read somewhere that comprehension might be relatively compromised in hyperlexia, but I don't think I am, or was, impaired in reading comprehension in any way. I do forget sometimes what I was reading and I have to reread stuff again, but I think I zone out more when I'm listening to people speak - I don't think it is directly related to reading. At first glance, it seems to be an extension of the old "literal thinking" and "rote learning" interpretations of autistic behavior.

I'm glancing through a Wikipedia article on it, and I can relate to a lack of interest in other children and poorer social skills. I was totally fine spending my days with books as a young child. There was a sort of a barrier between me and others that, I feel, only recently is beginning to fade.

There was a young lady on WP who even called herself "Hyperlexian". That was her WP handle. She might even have been a Moderator as I recall. Dont know what happned to her

Both hyperlexia, and dyslexia, seem to be common among autistics.

I saw a statistic that said between 5 and 20% of people with autism have hyperlexia.

As a junior high schooler, my reading level tested out as college level... But at the same time I have dysgraphia.... My spelling was terrible...

I'm Hyperlexic. I was reading by the time I was 3. I guess I taught myself, my mother says I used to surprise people by reading signs in the stores and reading package labels as a kid.

me

That sounds a lot like me. One thing I remember doing was going into our medicine cabinet at home, pulling out all of the bottles, and reading the ingredients on each bottle out loud.

I'd always watch a PBS kids show called "The Electric Company" back in the 1970s. Morgan Freeman was one of the actors on the show, and one of the characters he'd play was "Easy Reader," who loved to go all over town and read everything in sight. He especially loved to read things out loud, because reading was cool! As far back as I remember, anywhere I'd go, I'd love to read words out loud, too. 4-year-old hyperlexic me would upset everyone when I'd go to the playground and would loudly read out any words I'd see there, including those four-letter words the older kids had spray-painted on the walls I naturally identified with a guy like Easy Reader.

Here's a skit from the show where Easy Reader joyfully states the ingredients in a bottle of soda pop:

The Electric Company- Easy Reader and Dr. Delight

Well I read at a highschool level when i was 8 so?? Borderline hyperlexic maybe. I also have dysgraphia which can sometimes interfere with my writing. As for my writing my teachers always praise my essays. If you define it as reading before age 5 i don’t have it. I don’t think you can consider it hyperlexia. I think that most people if they bothered to read books would get a high reading level at a young age.

yes, I was a very early reader and test very high on reading, comprehension and vocabulary... I believe I use words and rely on them to understand my world because my visual and audio processing are extremely poor. Reading and words made the most sense to me even from an early age and I have spent my life developing those skills sort of as a "default" mechanism since almost anything in "real life" or "real time" is partially or poorly understood by me due to my poor neurological processing. It only took until I was almost 68 years old to learn this and understand it. Talk about an "aha" moment!

Yes I am and it definitely helps me in my paralegal job!