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AdamK
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Joined: 4 Jun 2013
Age: 40
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18 Oct 2014, 2:45 pm

Hi. There's probably been a topic about this already, but there's a lot of topics to sort through. If there's already been one then I'm sure someone can post a link to it. I couldn't read a word until I was 11. I had a private tutor, or something like that, and lots of help from my parents and my teachers, but I just couldn't read. Then, one day, I opened up a novel (not a children's story) and read through it with no problems, not even out loud, in just a few days. Since then I've been able to read every word I've ever come across. I didn't know why this happened until today. I assumed it was because I have dyslexia. Or I've been diagnosed with it anyway. For a while I doubted the diagnosis, but it seems likely that it was correct. Anyway, I was reading a book today by a teenager with Aspergers Syndrome today, and apparently exactly the same thing happened to him. During most of his childhood he couldn't read a word, then, one day, he started reading with no trouble. In fact he started reading at a higher age level than his actual age. So now I know it must be an Aspergers thing. Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone know why it happens this way to some people on the Spectrum?



olympiadis
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18 Oct 2014, 7:48 pm

I find this very interesting and I would like to know too.

It did not happen to me, but there was a time when I was around 13 that found that reading became a lot easier if I turned the book upside down. Somehow it helped me focus more on the content that I was reading and my mind strayed less. I stopped doing it a few months later because it annoyed teachers.

My first guess is that things like this are the results of inhibitions, - that is one brain function blocking or interrupting another. Also it likely has to do with the formation of neural pathways, and/or the pruning of them.

An experiment was done where a group of people were given special glasses to wear that inverted the image of everything. After several days the people's brains pruned the old neural pathways and re-formed new ones so that things once again looked normal to them until they removed the glasses. I know that our (ASD) formation and pruning cycles aren't normal.