What's the difference between hyperlexia w/ and w/o ASD?

Post Reply New Topic

Most of the sources I find out there on the internets consider hyperlexia to be a condition on the spectrum, but here on WP I have found lots of passing references to non-ASD hyperlexia. What I want to know is, do you believe that non-ASD hyperlexia exists, and, if so, is it possible to tell the difference between the two in a young child? Are there any characteristics that would, in your opinion, "disqualify" a young child from an ASD diagnosis-- keeping in mind that the hyperlexia profile can include such typical spectrum traits as echolalia and poor eye contact? In these cases I would assume there is still some kind of auditory/ language processing disorder that mimics or overlaps with ASD symptoms until the child is old enough to compensate. Anyway, I want to hear your stories.

(btw-I have found lots of info "out there" online and in the real world over the last few years--much of it contradictory--lots of checklists, an article about hyperlexia types that gets quoted everywhere but seems basically speculative, the Internet archive info for the American hyperlexia society (really interesting but not up to date), some books, etc.--so I don't need clarification on the standard criteria. Just some personal opinions with details about how you formed them. Thanks!)

This is the sort of thing you should see a professional for, if you're concerned.

We've been seeing a SLP for over a year now but have yet to seek an official diagnosis for a few reasons (strategic, dealing with a unique set of school district transfer issues). We will do it if it seems necessary after he is in school-- he just turned 4. In the meantime, I'm really just looking for personal accounts since I have yet to meet anyone personally who has dealt with this particular issue-- professional, parent, educator, anyone. I've met parents on forums, but they've all been in pretty much the same situation I am. So I really just want to get some perspective from adults and older kids who were hyperlexic as kids (or friends or family members of same) to find out where on the spectrum you are now, and some personal opinions about whether your hyperlexia was an aspect of "real" autism or something else.

I was hyperlexic, as were many on this forum. I know what it was like for me but not necessarily for others.

Some things to watch out for: Vocabulary usage exceeding vocabulary knowledge. A tendency toward echolalia (repeating things other people have said). A tendency to use phrases and words where they seem to fit without really understanding what they mean. Speech lagging behind reading ability.

Hyperlexia is not a sign of giftedness necessarily, and approximately 10% of all autistic children are hyperlexic. My understanding is that hyperlexia is pretty much a strong sign that the child is autistic as well. Gifted children can also teach themselves to read early, however, and giftedness may reflect that. But a child can be gifted and have autism ("twice exceptional") which may mean that hyperlexia may seem less severe or their access to vocabulary is even more pronounced than other hyperlexic children.

I don't really know what to look for in a child who reads early who is not autistic, however.

The research on hyperlexia is conflicted. Researchers are not sure whether hyperlexia is found in the otherwise typically-developing population, associated with various developmental disorders (mental retardation, specific language impairment, reading comprehension disorder, autism), or is a trait of and specific to autism.

Autism researcher Uta Frith defines hyperlexia as discrepancy between word-reading and reading comprehension and takes the view that hyperlexia is found across the population, from typical development to developmental disorders.

Autism researchers Fred Volkmar and Ami Klin take the view that hyperlexia is an autism-specific trait, and they think that hyperlexia comes with additional features, e.g. language delays/abnormalities in speaking/listening/understanding, social difficulties, motor delays/abnormalities, special abilities in visual-spatial/memory/music, obsessive interest in letters/numbers. These additional features are associated with autism.

I was not diagnosed with hyperlexia as a child, but it is likely that I was hyperlexic, and according to Volkmar and Klin, hyperlexia was one of my autistic traits, and according to Frith, hyperlexia was a condition that I had in addition to autism.

In my case, I had the hyperlexic trait of learning to read or decode words on my own from an early age (2-3). I had only two activities when I was three, and one was stacking blocks, and two was reading books. I showed no interest in toys at the toy store, only books at the bookstore. I was also obsessed with numbers, and learned to do arithmetic on my own in the same age range. Also, eggstremely good memory for eberrything seen and heard. Also, very little speech, mostly echolalic speech, and speech delay did not begin to resolve until age eight. My mother had initially thought that I had no speech delay, because she had thought that echolalia and reading out loud from books were adequate speech, but that is not considered spontaneous communicative speech according to clinicians. In my case, hyperlexia may have aided speech development and resolved speech delay, because I was taught a second language around age eight, and I learned reading very quickly, then speaking from reading, then speaking for communication in all languages, at which time I started to speak and communicate much more than I had ever done before, and this shift happened in about a year. Case studies of multi-lingual children have shown that the hyperlexia profile applied for eberry language that they learned.

If hyperlexia is a separate condition from autism, how to distinguish the two? For classically autistic child, it is easy, because the child is likely to have all-around communication delay in terms of not communicating through non-verbal or verbal means. The DSM criterion for speech delay says speech delay and lack of compensation for speech delay through mime or gesture. That is communication delay, which would indicate autism. I don't think that a general lack of communication occurs in children who only have a discrepancy between word-reading and reading comprehension skills, as hyperlexia is defined by Frith. For child who develops communication abilities around the normal age and does not appear classically autistic, it is harder to figure this out, and I have read on Internetz that some parents consider their children to be hyperlexic but having no developmental disorders, and others consider their children to have ASD with hyperlexia, and the descriptions of the children are not particularly different, so it may depend entirely on what parents or clinicians decide they want to be believe for a certain child. I think that children who have the broader set of traits associated with both hyperlexia and autism are simply autistic with hyperlexia.

My son is definitely hyperlexic and shares most of the traits you guys just listed- but most of those are considered part of the core hyperlexia definition. BUT that definition is commonly presented with the caveat: usually but not always associated with the autism spectrum. And of course those core traits are there for this elusive non-ASD hyperlexic too, or else the kid would just be a precocious reader and not a hyperlexic at all.

The thing I keep seeing out there that I'm looking to investigate here is the claim that some hyperlexic kids often start out with a spectrum diagnosis but then go on to loose it or outgrow it sometime in childhood. And that an ASD hyperlexic would start out in more or less the same place, but would retain characteristics of autism or AS after the language difficulties subside (if they subside). I would be interested to actually talk to someone wo had this experience, or knew someone who did. Or conversely, to be able to dismiss it as wishful or wrong thinking on the parts of the adults Involved.

And, just so we're clear, I do think its correct to consider my son as on the spectrum, though I suspect he will not meet the full criteria for AS, since aside from his early obsession with letters and numbers he is not at all obsessive or rigid (he has strong interests but no fixed, all encompassing ones), has no apparent sensory difficulties, does imaginative play, etc. He has definitely had that atypical echolalia-type language development style and I assume he will continue to have communication difficulties for at least a few more years, with social difficulties as a result. I can't tell whether his social difficulties are just a consequence of his language problems or go deeper than that. My continuing confusion about that question is the one of the reasons I lurk around forums like WP. Whatever happens will be fine, but it would be nice if I had a slightly better idea about how the next 4 or 5 years will play out. Also, you know, I just want to understand, because I'm curious about what makes my son tick, and because I have a great deal of intellectual curiosity about this subject in general.

I am by no means an expert on this. My daughter is hyperlexic and she has been diagnosed with autism. I found this article on and it kind of talks about some hyperlexic kids growing out of the autistic symptoms. I thought it was an interesting read.

Hyperlexic

I have a child who is hyperlexic but does not have ASD.

I think hyperlexia means extremely early reading (decoding) with much lower comprehension.

My son started reading words by 24 months without any reading instruction, maybe just a phrase here or there, and was reading text by 2.5 years old. By 3.5 years old he was reading at about an 8 year old level, but his reading comprehension appeared to be almost non-existent. However, at almost 5 years old, his decoding would be about a 9 year old level, but his reading comprehension is now almost equal to his decoding, except in texts which would require him to have the experiences of a 9 year old.

He did not have any real language delay and although for a time he had some of the hyperlexic pattern of speaking, he still ended up speaking earlier than average. Started saying words at 6 - 9 months and speaking in 2 word sentences by 16 months. Up until about 20-22 months he would do a mix of 'hyperlexic' sort of language (take parts of text he heard and use that appropriately in conversation) and was also learning the rules of language, and has learned them very well now. I'm not sure whether he was actually a bit late with pragmatic language or he just had difficulty in having conversations with people he didn't know well, but it did not _appear_ to be as good as many children his age at ages 2 or 3, and then at about 4 to 4.5 years old his pragmatic language and conversation had become above average.

He had very bad anxiety and sensory problems when starting preschool (3.5 years), which settled toward the end of the year. When he started school this year (4.5 years) he experienced the same pattern of anxiety and sensory problems, except to a much milder degree.

He had verbal stimming and head shaking at the height of his stressful period when he started preschool.

He was really awkward, terrified of other kids actually in social situations (sensory difficulties with things moving around him) when he started preschool, but by the end of the year he was outgoing and friendly and very well liked by lots of kids. A year later, when he started school, he only had social difficulties when having sensory processing problems or anxiety, and made friends within a couple of weeks.

He is quite brilliant at music, and has been since about 18 months old, when he would sit for an hour or more a day playing.

At just on 4 years old, we took him for assessment to a psychologist and OT and both recommended that it would not be worthwhile testing him for ASD because he would likely not meet the criteria. He has a 'diagnosis' of sensory processing disorder.

But, his reading ability was never a 'splinter skill' in that his ability to understand abstract concepts was also extremely high. He developed pretend play in the normal way, but the amount he did was a bit low (he preferred to be playing music and was a little bit repetitive in his games, but unsure whether he was just perfecting them or whether excessive repetition). He has a very good imagination, but did not really show this at all until he was about 4 years old when it _appeared_ to explode.

Very early and good at gross motor, but delayed in fine motor, catching up with fine motor at around 3.5 - 4 years old and then after 4.5 years becoming advanced at fine motor and average to good at gross motor.

He gets really upset and frustrated with us sometimes when we don't follow rules or he thinks we've violated his "rights", but he is not rigid, doesn't need routines or structure.

Has a wide range of activities that he likes, but his favourites are music, astronomy, speech and drama, reading, maths.

Sometimes his motor planning seems very low, impaired almost and then other times it is very high. It is very much affected by his anxiety, perfectionism, sensory difficulties.

Up until about 4 years old, he seemed to have difficulties tracking conversations when there were more than 2 people speaking, and he often couldn't follow what was being said. He told me that when people refer to "this" or "that", he didn't know what they were talking about. We realized that he had difficulties with nonverbal language and perhaps pragmatics. Again, this resolved with more exposure to situations, and now he has a normal level of nonverbal language, if not enhanced because he had to compensate and concentrate on it for a while there.

He does have 'autistic-like' traits, in that his sensory problems often cause him to act in ways which seem like autism and he doesn't hear in a busy environment, gets overwhelmed and kind of shuts down, doesn't respond to people talking to him. HOWEVER, this is very inconsistent, especially when he at least a little bit familiar with the environment and calm, he has none of the pragmatic language, social problems, comprehension problems, literal interpretation, difficulties with subtle clues, understanding other people have perspectives, that sort of thing. In fact, away from a situation where he is experiencing sensory processing problems, he is actually quite advanced in the areas you would expect a child with autism to have difficulty with.

My husband and I often joke about his behaviour, saying that he is just like a child who has autism, except he doesn't have the autism part.

So he was/is hyperlexic with plenty of ASD-like traits which pettered out between 2.5 years and 5 years, and still has some 'autistic-like' traits at times, but he most certainly does not have autism. He developed his skills in an unusual timeframe and with exposure to preschool and school from 3.5 years onwards, he has become increasingly "normal", often with the personality, traits, responses, coping of a child who is "twice exceptional" (gifted with learning disability).

I don't know what the future will hold, but I think he will eventually become/appear "completely normal".

I also think that he has a high IQ and that is partly what enabled him to learn reading early and I don't think he will ever be average, even when the other kids catch up to him with reading.

I do believe there could be problems distinguishing between the 'autistic-like' kind of hyperlexia or the high IQ neuroptyical hyperlexia, or perhaps they can co-exist. Because, while my son most likley _is_ neurotypical, I expect that within the next few years (by about 7 years old) he will also _appear_ completely neurotypical. He has a very strong need to belong and I wonder whether, with a bit of help from us, he saw what was normal, made a choice to think, act, do like that and voila! Now, maybe he has got ASD and he's acting. It's possible. Not trying to be silly, but really, how does a psychologist with a high average IQ assess whether people like Newton, Einstein, Mozart have ASD? (Not likening my son to these people, just making my point about high IQ, ASD and hyperlexia.)