Hyperlexia and Math skills

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I'm posting this instead of the parenting section because I'd like to get feedback from the wider WP community.

My son taught himself to read before I had any clue about his abilities. He has above average reading and spelling skills. However, he is struggling in Math. When I posted about this in the parenting section, a poster told of his/her experience saying something to the effect of Math not making sense to a hyperlexic brain.

I've been wondering more and more about this. Googling didn't really provide anything useful. Can any members who have personal experience share any tips or advice on helping him have better success with Math? Is there a specific type of curriculum that is more suited to the hyperlexic brain?

Evenin.

I hope I can help. My background is in neuropsych (I'm a clinician), so I might have some useful information. If at any time you want more information, feel free to PM me.

Make sure you have a licensed clinician diagnose the hyperlexia. A lot of people self-diagnose hyperlexia when really they're simply (and sometimes not-so-simply) prolixic. There's a clinical difference, though often times autism assumes this co-morbid diagnosis without regard to proper testing.

There's nothing that says, in literature, that hyperlexia will impact mathematical-computational skills. As a matter of fact, the lexical process can be fairly similar in many individuals - especially those living on the spectrum. There is, however, research to indicate that people live with different types of "intelligence", including social, emotional, musical, spatial, mathematical/computational, and linguistic intelligence. These types, or categories, can be compartmentalized enough that one could be musical genius, but not capable significant reading comprehension, or learning a new language. More to your point, they could excel in languages, but do poorly (in comparison) in math.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this; it's not pathological. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses.

If there was a pathological deficit, you would have (well, a clinician) hopefully identified it before now. There is testing that can be done. He may need math tutors, special help, a certain way of understanding, or being taught. Perhaps he's a visual learner, or needs the math "read" to him. The non-pathological possibilities are endless.

Personally, I was completely non-verbal until I was nearly 3 years old! Then I did have a "hyperlexic explosion" - and in more than one language. It baffled, stunned, and (frankly) angered a lot of people. There are a lot of deficits I have, today, but I've learned to overcome some of them. I speak multiple languages, and have excelled in the sciences, but I can't tell you *anything* about history (oh! except that Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1942!), politics, geography, or economics... I'm lucky I have direct deposit!

We all have strengths and weaknesses...

And that's ok!

_Bloom

I'm not hyperlexic but I do have a weakness in maths.
I wasn't interested in maths and I've always been more artistic. That's not to say that those who are good at maths can't also be good at art.
I thought I had a maths disability but I found when on ADHD medication I could actually concentrate on it long enough to not feel overwhelmed by the working out the problems. If fact sometimes I do mental arithmetic in my head to kick the pills in.
I had a learning disorder in both maths and English but received more help at school for English. I was tutored on maths outside of school but it never stayed in my memory.
I'm a practical person. If I can't use my knowledge for something I lose it.

I'm not sure if what I said could make you understand it more. I still find maths to this day boring. I bought my own IQ test and enjoyed all the problems except when I got up to the maths questions I lost interest. People on the spectrum really find it hard to stay focused on those things that aren't interesting.

I'm hyperlexic and, yes, math was difficult for me. But the good news is that I did catch up, and am currently in college with my most advanced class probably either differential equations or linear systems--both of which are much further than most people go. I'm not extremely hyperlexic; I learned to read before age 4 and without help, but not too long before that; and while my comprehension lagged behind at first, it caught up to my peers' comprehension ability sometime around the sixth grade, and caught up to my reading ability sometime around the tenth grade, so that I have both at college level now. So, mild hyperlexia at most, and didn't need any special ed for comprehension skills because I was never any worse than low-normal.

My problem with math was that memorizing math facts had no real pattern to it--no context to hook the ideas to. "*8x6=48" doesn't really attach to anything else but numbers--not until you learn algebra or geometry, and learn that 8x6 can be thought of as the sides of a rectangle or a possible meaning for the equation xy=z. Oddly enough, the further I got, the easier it got for me. And the more patterns I saw, the easier it got for me to understand.

For example, there are patterns in 8x6:
4x6=24, 2x24=48 So 48 is a 4x6x2 rectangular prism. Or a 3x4x4 one, which is cool because 3x4 is 12 and 12x4 is 48.

But memorizing the multiplication tables... It just took me a long while. Not until high school. Not until I could see the patterns.

The unfortunate thing about elementary school math is that you have to be able to do it before you can possibly fully understand it. Understanding the theory of addition or multiplication is something that you can't do without a pretty good ability to do abstract thinking, and that doesn't come until you're twelve or so (or younger if you're talented at it). But you can memorize and use math facts, and that's what they teach you when you're in elementary school.

The only way I could really do math, without understanding it, as you're obliged to do in elementary school, is to have a list of instructions and follow the list item by item. A flowchart would work, too, for those procedures that include decision points. All that memorization is just a stopgap measure until you can really understand it, but I guess it's all you can do, early on. And, anyway, many people never go beyond the memorization to begin with--which might work for me, if only I could actually memorize information without any context to hook it to. But I can't. So I require understanding, or else a rote procedure that can be written down and followed.

I taught myself reading and arithmetic early, in the 2-3 age range. I don't know if I have hyperlexia, as that has not been officially assessed or diagnosed for me. I learned arithmetic visually, from lining stuff up and arranging stuff into patterns, like 4x5 or 6x8 grids of things. The specific things that I arranged were piles of dirt. I filled a small pail with dirt, then overturned the pail to create a beautiful pile, then beautiful patterns from the piles, and I did this over and over and over again and again and again all day eberryday when I was two and lived at my grandparents' house, and they had a yard with a big pile of dirt that was used for something or other. Maybe your son would benefit from learning math visually, or first in visual patterns, then into rules like 3x4=12 and 27/3=9.

Once you do find a way to help your son learn math, just remember, there will probably come a point that he won't be able to get beyond. Be happy if you can get him through basic math, which everyone does need--add, subtract, multiply, divide, and some knowledge of fractions, decimals, and how to manage a check book. Don't be too upset if he can't get through algebra, and the other higher math courses. Most people don't need higher math once they are done with school, so just get him through basic math.

I am no good at higher math, but handle basic math okay. I also took a basic bookkeeping/accounting course in high school. It was a year long course, and I managed to get an A in it. I liked the text book because it was easy to understand. Accounting math is kind of like an extended form of basic math, so it was within my abilities to handle. It was an elective choice--I picked it myself, because I thought it would be good to know how to handle my own accounting. I think it did help me somewhat. I also took a typing elective one year in high school, because I thought that would help me type my own letters. This was pre-computers--they were electric machines. Because of my motor skills problems, I never got fast enough to be a good typist, but the teacher knew I was trying hard--I even came into other classes during some of my free periods to practice, and I practiced at home. The efforts paid off. I had a below passing grade, but the teacher bumped it up to just passing because I had tried so hard. I am still not good enough to earn my living as a typist, but I have occasionally helped out at some of the places I worked at when they were busy, and needed some extra typing help. Although I am not fast, I do know the keyboard, and am a pretty good speller--in American English. Unfortunately, the online spell checker apps are all British.

Don't stress your boy too much over this. Just find the best ways to teach him, and help him take it as far as he is able.

I was reading well before 2 years old and probably am/was hyperlexic. Math posed no problems for me at all until I got to the level Callista is at now, and I got quite a shock that I might actually have to put some effort into understanding math because I never had to before. So, I wouldn't assume that hyperlexia is necessarily related to his math difficulties, though it depends a lot on how he is being taught and assessed.

If I could offer any suggestion, it would be to explain the theory behind the math, verbally, in as much detail as he is capable of understanding. Help him to learn the rules, rather than the "it just is" approach taken by many teachers.

Has your son taken the WISC? If so, was there a pronounced bias in his subscores?

I'm a hyperlexic Aspie. Taught myself to read very early, and between 4-7 I wasobsessed with learning words and reading everything. By 1st grade I was reading on a high school level. Math wasn't too much a challenge for me. I was just more interested in music than math and I was mildly savant-ish about music (like with reading, I taught myself to read music and the play my first two instrument at an early age without any instruction).

Hyperlexics can have learning disabilities too, like a math disability. I have dysgraphia, a writing disability.

I was precocious at both reading and math. I learned the alphabet when I was 2, could read at age 4, and could also add at age 4 or 5! I must have learned numbers right along with or just slightly after the alphabet! My mother taught me to subtract, multiply and divide before first grade, but the elementary school I went to couldn't really challenge me at math.

By middle school, my reading had regressed to the mean as I had trouble following long novels, while I was in the highest math classes they offered and acing all the tests (although sometimes not doing homework.) To this day my math is excellent (took some high-level math classes at college and got A's) while my reading isn't as good (may get B's in some gen-ed courses.)

Good thread.

I have hyperlexia and my maths skills are average to strong. The thing I was delayed in is motor skills, but I had no intervention for that at school.