Hyperlexia and ASD?

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I am just curious how many of you have both hyperlexia and ASD?

I am just learning about hyperlexia now, and am curious how common it is among ASD, and if it is more common among ASD than NTs.

The more I read about it, the more I am convinced I have it in conjunction with ASD. Obviously I had all the social problems that accompany ASD as well, but in regards to hyperlexia, I had a lot of trouble with verbal language and still do. I spoke late, and to this day, I have a lot of vocabulary in my head that can make my A-range essays for school sound professional, yet I cannot seem to verbalize those thoughts. I also read before I went to school, and by the age of 5 I was able to read novels.

EDIT: for some reason, although I did type it in, my last option did not appear. That was No (and no ASD). If that is you, please let us know as well!

Also, just out of curiousity....

because hyperlexia is SO similar to the characteristics of autism (and not all children have both), how can doctors tell the difference. If the characteristics are the same, how does a psych know that a person has both or just one or the other?

I am definitely both hyperlexic and on the spectrum. As a child, I was skipped from kindergarten to 1st grade, and was always much more advanced in reading and writing skills than other children. Of course this made me rather unpopular. I was reading novels somewhere around 7 years old, and I also enjoyed reading my brother's textbooks, (he was in high school.)

I was probably hyperlexic, though they did not diagnose hyperlexia at the time. I was reading very early and was well ahead of the norm. Beyond that I show a lot of AS traits.

Hyperlexic. My first word was "nine" when I was six or seven months of age, I was interested in the alphabet when I was one, I wanted to read when I was two, started learning when I was three, and I was fairly good by age four. Taught myself a lot of stuff, too, from an early age, and I was reading at a twelfth grade level in second grade. I consider myself linguistically inclined, and my father has often used the word "hyperlexic" to describe me and my earliest years.

No hyperlexia here. I didn't learn to read until I was six and didn't start really reading until I was eight and I had a hard time understanding what I was reading. I never really taught myself anything. I also read chapter books late, I was nine when I started. I hated chapter books because there was no pictures.

My first sentence was at 13 months and I taught myself to read at three years. My ability to use words exceeded my comprehension of them - I could "read" at a college level in the first grade and I had a tendency to use words that "sounded right" for context in conversations, although I did not know what they all meant.

I can't say whether or not I am hyperlexic. I just know that I read at two years nine months. I was into chapter books (4th grade chaper books...which are simple, really) when I was 4, "discovered Poe in 3rd grade, devoured the first 4 Harry Potter books in 4th grade and stole some Stephen King (yeah...bad bad me),and was tested as "reading on a college level" in 5th grade.

I read out of necessity. I needed an escape. It wasn't an interest in letters or anything. Just something to make me forget about the real world. I remember being very confused about words when I was 4. I would read things and understand them and then think "why do I understand that? who told me that? did someone teach me these words?". I remember around that age...I saw the word atheist (What I now know is the word atheist) and asked my grandmother "what does this mean? why would he ask God if he wanted him to be birth stone when God didn't make it snow for him?". It was a panel in my Calvin and Hobbs book. Calvin was begging God for snow and yelled to the heavens "DO YOU WANT ME TO BECOME AN ATHEIST?!". I mistook the word for amethyst and then immediately wondered why I knew that word and THEN wondered what the hell that was supposed to mean. My grandmother told me that it did NOT say amethyst, but would not tell me what the word meant. lol

I had "why do I know what that means?" moments A LOT until I was about 11.

From The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbs...incase anyone was interested. =] I miss that book...

I was reading when I was 3. When I got to kindergarten, the teacher always made me read to the class. My mom made a big deal of it, but I didn't understand why it was noteworthy, since my older brothers learned to read at about the same time (chronologically, not age-wise).

I don't think I'm hyperlexic. I learned to read fairly early, but nothing out of the ordinary, I don't think. I don't actually remember learning to read, but when I started school and we were taught to read, I found that I already knew how to read.

I learned two new languages when I was six, and I learned them quickly, but it was out of necessity since I was suddenly immersed in both, one in the new country I was in and the other in the international school I went to. (English is not my first language.) I just assume it happened because kids are quite malleable at that age, and because the circumstances required it.

I don't know that it was recognized as such 50 years ago, but I was definitely a wordy little cuss.

I'm definitely not hyperlexic..........people were worried that I might be dyslexic because I learned to read very late and very slowly. However I learned to read (well) all of a sudden when I was about eight almost nine years old and from that point on I was a really good reader (in the advanced reading group) and started reading all the time. I was/am an odd child.

From Wiki:

Hyperlexia sounds alot like Autism, some people suspect all of those with it fall somewhere on the Autism spectrum. Others divide it into subcategories.

Hyperlexia was identified in 1967, three years after I had a speech delay to age four and continued issues with speech most of my life. I had a precocious ability to read and remember feeling like I understood everything in the world at age three, but not being able to put it into words. As a toddler my mother was complaining about lost keys, and I took her right to them before I was able to talk.

I remember having an early fear of not being able to speak, and as a young child would often grunt in church, where speaking was not appropriate, to assure myself I could still make sounds.

I had a problem with handwriting, but given the proper focus was surprised at the result of what I wrote when I was young. What came out was much more than what I expected. Typing and computers made written communication much easier.

MRI's suggest that dyslexia and hyperlexia are opposite conditions. I have known dyslexics that were good speakers and socializers but had problems reading and writing. I wonder how much different their perception of the world and the way they think may be.

Being able to decode numbers and words at a young age might spill over into all other areas of life in finding meaning in every detail rather than the overall picture. I'm just guessing but I would imagine the complexity of the visual experience of TV along with so many other experiences in our culture might be somewhat of a mindblowing experience to a young child with hyperlexia.

As stores got bigger with more items on shelves, particularly when they were stacked to the ceiling like Home Depot, I found it disconcerting and wondered why. I think it was too much unfamiliar detail to take in at one time. I felt compelled to be able to identify and understand every item, all at once. I don't think everyone experiences life like this, but I could be wrong.

Super Walmart was a nightmare; a flood of details with merchandise and people. I felt compelled to construct what each persons life was like, based on details of clothing, movement and facial expressions. I was so relieved when they opened up a book section, I could hide in the corner and read, and my wife could face all those details: merchandise and people.

In the old days before things got too big and complicated, life was pleasantly stimulating. Cars looked different, easy to distinguish; there weren't as many categories, or as many on the road. But, maybe these things are not an issue for people that don't live in a world of details.

I remember my school librarian thinking that it was both adorable and odd that I was devouring the works of Dickens when I was 7.

Speaking, however, remains a trickier beast . . .

I used to joke I had reverse dyslexia because of certain things I would do while reading. Then I learned about hyperlexia.



I remember being constantly fascinated with television. My earliest interests tended to be television shows and they filled my brain with so many possibilities.



I wonder if agnosia plays into this too. I get overwhelmed by details sometimes and there are times I see a (or many things) thing as its component parts and thus can't interpret what it is without processing it into a whole, which is really kind of overwhelming when it happens.

According to my mother, I learned to write and read when I was 3, but I don't remember writing or reading before I was 5. But I'm much better at writing than speaking and I was always reading when I was a kid (and I still read a lot, but mostly on the internet).

In other words, I'm not sure if I'm hyperlexian.