Talk:Hyperlexia

Why only children?
Is there a reason the article comes across like it only affects young children and develops into a different disability when the child ages. nothing at all really about if and how it affects adults. (unsigned comment)


 * I think that a lot of the hyperlexia organizations are focused that way. I know that I joined a hyperlexia mailing list at one time, thinking there would be hyperlexics there to talk to -- but it was all parents going "woe is me, my child's life is ruined." People don't seem to think about hyperlexic adults; and to some extent, I think it's a recent diagnosis, so there aren't all that many adults running around with the dx. Anyway, I think that if anyone can contribute to the article in this area it would be great! But it has to have citable sources, etc.; it can't just be anecdotal or personal memoirs. -- ManekiN e ko | Talk 12:41, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

By definition, it is a disorder that manifests when people are children. From my experience in following hyperlexia on the web for a few years, it sounds very much like alot of adult hyperlexics learn coping skills to deal with their deficits in processing spoken language. As to why the hyperlexia mailing lists are filled with parents, well, I think that is because many hyperlexics really struggle in early childhood and neurotypical parents need lots of help in understanding a kid with a really different approach to learning. --EW-- .............. My own life experience, maybe will be interesting to anyone trying to find sources about this topic. My name is Neil, today I was writing about my dad's private library, I was 4 years old or less and dad gave me 2 new encyclopedias as a gift, I could not read yet but I could spell words because I am educated since 1 year old or maybe even before that because dad usually to travel for work and mom was a business woman. (My first memory is standing in a baby's bed while other babies were sleeping looking at the blue wall and the A4 drawings from older children). I remember looking at the pictures from the encyclopedia, after it I started to spell the words and understand the meaning because I already could talk. I read the entire encyclopedia, one for adults and the other one for children full of dinosaurs. I also read other two old encyclopedias with black and white pictures from dad's library and a bunch of his books, i.e. Stephen King, Jean Piaget, classic Portuguese literature, etc. After I attended school for 5 years I joined the 1st grade in Brazil, I already have read several encyclopedias on my own and during lessons my teacher was teaching the alphabet. (Because not all kids are educated since birth in Brazil). I remember that she would write BA and ask us to pronounce the sound, kids kept on repeating it, for me was so boring, I did not pay attention to the lessons as well to my teacher and just drew in my notebooks, also read the books we had in the class very fast because they were very easy. After few weeks or maybe one or two months, my parents were called to the school and the school convinced them that I had learning disability. They dropped me one year back and I started to attend lectures together with my cousin that is one year younger than me. In the 1st grade I had no classmates, I do not remember the reason, but I would be alone the whole day and the only moment I would talk to someone was during lunch break where I would always play together with my cousin because we were raised together and he was attending the same school but one grade below me because he is younger. The other kids were very stupid, maybe that is why I could not interact with them, my cousin was also educated together with me since birth, so we had many nice things to talk about while the other kids would talk about a toy I probably was talking to my cousin deeper subjects. That year when my parents decided to move me back one year saved me from being autist, before that I would only fight with all other kids. My parents were always called because I used to punch one, two sometimes even tree kids by myself. They mocked me because I was smaller and the weirdo. After studying full time with my cousin I have learned to socialize, but looking back I was always a kid alone in my room studying by myself subjects from all topics, history, geopolitics, languages, math, biology, philosophy, Etc... I was excellent during my whole student life, got 7 scholarships, I am fluent in 6 languages and so on. But now in my adult life I have a problem, is very difficult to have friends, I always feel lonely and depressed, I always investigate my life trying to understand why I am who I am. I also have trouble in the university, there professors are arrogant and stupid. When they ask a question, I know the answer but I do not say anything because they always ignore me, when I answer they ignore and ask someone else. They despise me, sometimes they even reprove me on purpose. Being honest, I socialize with other people 5, 15, 20 minutes because they always talk about stupid subjects and always when I tell anything out of 10 people, one is listening, the other 9 ignores me and some even nod their heads demonstrating completely uninterested. For you to understand what I mean, I have learned English by myself and have been overseas the first time when I was 19 years old. Nobody believes me when I tell them, many people call me a liar because everything I say is too incredible to be believable. I believe to be lucky, because those encyclopedias gave me a curiosity thirst that is never satisfied, so I understand deeply politics and all sorts of topics because until today I stay awake at night studying quantum physics, economy, arts and whatever comes up in my mind. I believe that my adulthood is very difficult for a particular reason. Back in school I was the weirdo, but I scored 100% the maximum score in half the subjects and 90% in the other half until I graduate in high school. So when someone comes showing off how strong they were, I just showed off how smart I was and that made me survive, I had best friends and nowadays I know they were only my friends because I always made the homework with perfection and gave to everyone copy it from me. Now when we are adults, I am in a group of 10 uneducated adults that learned the alphabet at the age of 6 when at that time I already went through thousands of encyclopedia pages, then when I was 12 got interested in politics and read all Karl Marx, greek philosophers, Bakunin and so many other masterpieces. So now I try to talk to them, they know nothing about me but they have the power to disagree because they are also adults and who the fuck am I? This thirst for knowledge made me curious, one day I wanted to move overseas, after 10 years spent overseas living in more than 6 nations, speaking all those languages mentioned above and visited 35 nations maybe more none wants to talk to me. If they do, most of them threat me with disregard, disrespect, they fully demonstrate that I am an evil person because I tell the facts of reality. To be honest, I am not autist because mom dropped me one year and I got my best friend, my cousin studying with me but until today I am lonely in this world, except few people that I have phone calls with on a weekly basis or else will be insane no to have someone smart to talk with. Regards...

Removal of autism references
To RN: I was wondering why you removed all references to autism/AS from the hyperlexia article? Most of what I have read about hyperlexia indicates that hyperlexia is probably on the spectrum, though of course there is some dispute over it. (This Google search lists a lot of articles discussing the connection between hyperlexia and autism.) I think that, given this background, it is inappropriate to remove autism from the hyperlexia page; instead, we should perhaps expand the article to address the on-spectrum/off-spectrum perspectives. (Also posted on RN's Talk page.) ManekiNeko | Talk 20:33, 24 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes - I think they are appropriate - just not as they were. For example - the two mentions were:


 * "Hyperlexia is a syndrome often connected with autism."
 * No links here backed that up. We should explain this rather than asserting it.
 * "A child with hyperlexia typically has problems with social interaction and comprehension of words similar to those with Asperger's syndrome or full-blown autism."
 * This is actually kind of redundant - that's why it was removed - for example " They may also have difficulty learning the rules of language from examples or from trial and error." is essentially the same thing.
 * So, in other words, what was there before was just some redundant stuff and some unreferenced mentions. If you (or someone) could discuss the connection in an NPOV way with proper sources this could be yet another great autism-related article. Ryan Norton T 20:45, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, I went ahead and made an attempt. What do you think? It could probably be cleaned up still though. Ryan Norton T 20:54, 24 September 2005 (UTC)


 * OK, I think the attempt is excellent. It was the wholesale removal of the autism refs that bothered me, because it seemed unwarranted and... dare I say it... POV. ;) If I have time I might work on the article some more and try to flesh it out, but I may or may not have time since I have a thesis proposal to write at the moment. Thanks for working on this article! ManekiNeko | Talk 21:00, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

When do they speak?
Just thought it might be good to compare the typical speaking age to the average speaking age of hyperlexic children. What do you think? 1337 r0XX0r 15:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * If anyone has that information (referenced), by all means, add it. :) -- ManekiN e ko | Talk 22:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

"is a syndrome in which the main characteristics are an above normal ability to read coupled with a below normal ability to understand spoken language."

Then what is it called when it ISN'T coupled with that "below normal ability to understand spoken language." ? Kristian Joensen 00:55, 7 February 2006 (UTC)


 * "an above normal ability to read". :) No, seriously, hyperlexia is specifically referring to this kind of learning disorder. If you have above-normal reading ability and no problems with understanding of spoken language, it's not a disorder, I guess...? -- ManekiN e ko | Talk 06:26, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Well just because it has got a name doesn't make it a disorder, according to the article about hypergraphia that isn't neccesarily a disorder, why must hypelexia neccesarily have to be/refer to a disorder ? Kristian Joensen 22:37, 7 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Whether hypergraphia is or isn't a disorder isn't relevant to the hyperlexia article, I think. Hyperlexia is the accepted term for a specific disorder. Whether they should have used a different term or not, I can't really say. Perhaps there should be a term for above-normal reading ability that isn't coupled with a separate learning disability; but if there is, I don't know of it. -- ManekiN e ko | Talk 03:32, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

That might very will be, I don't know, I am trying to get this all clarified. But isn't Hyperlexia jsut a [i]symptom[/i] which comes with a certain disorder/disability instead of the disability itself ? What if some peoples "above normal ability to read" is caused by exactly the same factors as "hyperlexia" but they don't have the "below normal ability to understand spoken language"? Surely that is possible.

I brought up hypergraphia not because I think it in itself has anything to do with this article, but because they sound similar to me, it was just used as an example. As it is now the beginning of this article is confusing me.Kristian Joensen 17:23, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I think there are two things that are hyperlexia: one is the basic "above normal ability to read"; the other is this larger syndrome of Hyperlexia which includes  "above normal ability to read", associated learning disability, and a bunch of symptoms that overlap with Asperger syndrome and other autistic spectrum conditions, which is what the article is basically discussing.


 * I do agree the article needs to be improved. It is still a stub, after all. :) -- ManekiN e ko | Talk 01:53, 11 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I started reading (and understanding) when I was 2 and a half years old, but I have no problems grammatically or with vocal speech... Someone on the #wikia IRC channel said I had hyperlexia if I could read so early - my parents gave me a phone book to keep me busy! - but on reading this article, I don't think I can rightly call myself hyperlexic. Pity, really, I liked the term. Oh well. (As for hypergraphia, I'm writing a book and love programming, but really, I dislike having my self-being collapsed into terms...) Oddlyoko talk

Is it hereditary?
From anecdoal evidence gathered on the web, it appears to me that hyperlexia may have some hereditary component, with families often reporting that there are several generations of hyperlexics, or at least numerous instances of precocious (preschool age) reading, even if not accompanied with auditory processing difficulties.

Autism is highly heritable, so hyperlexia is probably as well, but to the best of my knowledge (and I have read most of the academic literature) there is no direct evidence of this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Economicprof (talk • contribs) 02:49, 5 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm from one of those families where hyperlexia is inherited, both my wife and (autistic) son taught themselves to read at age 3-4. She has no problems with auditory processing.  He has problems with it, but how'd one know whether it was from the hyperlexia or from the autism?  In any case, I have no doubt that it can be heritable. 50.0.101.103 (talk) 01:51, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Comorbid, not on the Spectrum
Rather than being on the autism spectrum, my understanding is that hyperlexia usually occurs along with autism or ASD - thus, most hyperlexic people are alos autistic, rather than the two having a lot in common on their own. --BlackJar72 23:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

At some point, this is semantics -- you could interpret hyperlexia as a spectrum symptom, or as a disorder on the spectrum, or as a frequently comorbid but still nonspectrum disorder. There are reasons for each of this interpretations, and ultimately it is a matter of labeling rather than a matter of one label being objectively correct. Also, different interpretations are more appropriate with different people, depending on their individual constellations of symptoms. 71.248.179.113 19:37, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I bet in the future, we will consider Hyperlexia (language), sensory processing disorder (senses), and Autism (lack of emotional perception or understanding) a comorbid triad; people with one probably also have one of the others. Instead of a linear spectrum, more of a planar spectrum. --174.56.60.208 (talk) 07:38, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

written language comprehension
I made a small change to the first sentence, in bold:
 * Hyperlexia is a condition in which the main characteristics are an above average ability to read accompanied with a below average ability to understand spoken and/or written language.

Even though hyperlexic individuals can read well -- in the sense that they can decode written words, and successfully "get the words off the page" through grapheme-phoneme conversion, they still may not come away with the ideas expressed by the words they just read. 71.248.179.113 19:49, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
 * All sources mention only spoken language.SuperElephant 15:50, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Caution
I think this might be getting away from the point. I am hyperlexic, I have difficulty in reading and writing but not so much speaking and listening. I could speak at a very young age. I think the article is worse now than it was a few months ago with regards to accuracy.82.6.29.26 (talk) 17:14, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Confused by explanation
The claim

Hyperlexia is the highly developed ability to recognize words with little or no comprehension of them

is not clear to me. Would this imply that they could differ between "hyperlexia" and "dyslexia" (as words) at age three, but be unable to connect the word "hyperlexia" with the concept hyperlexia until a much higher age? Please clarify, possibly with one or two specific examples. 88.77.145.143 (talk) 04:18, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Autism and Hyperlexia
I hypothesize, based on my own personal experiences, that in my case of hyperlexia, written/read English was my first language, and that I was not fluent in heard/spoken English. I thought in text, not sound, and yet not in pictures of text but in an imagined sense of touch, of what the shapes of the words would feel like if I touched them. It was that sense of touch that carried meaning and definition. I was initially diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, but I was rediagnosed as an adult with Asperger Syndrome, on the high-functioning portion of the Autism spectrum. I completely missed out on the hidden curriculum of my school days, which was taught by peers and teachers by nonverbal communication: tone and volume of voice, facial expressions, hand and body gestures, posture, rapidity of movement, and fashion. As a result, I was completely unprepared for college and the adult world outside of school. I now believe that written language, spoken language, sign language, body language, and Braille are far more different than gestalt thinkers believe them to be, and far more similar than particular thinkers like myself can comprehend. To be fluent in each is to be multilingual; to think in one and translate into another is to be a traveler, a tourist in another culture's world. --BlueNight (talk) 00:21, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Reference no. 7
I tagged citation 7 as a broken one because while the journal does exist; the author doesn't, and much less an article in the journal with that title. It's too bad. I thought that that was an interesting piece of information.  Lighthead  þ 23:23, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Like I mentioned in the edit summary, Kate Nation actually does exist; but that journal entry doesn't. She actually does mention that entry on her university page. The previous reference actually explains the exact same thing in so many words. Since there's so little activity on this article, I think that not too many people care about this. If any one actually wants to hunt down that journal entry, they can if they want to. Just make sure you check the revision history of this article and you'll see it. I sort of doubt anybody'll be able to find it. I racked my brain.  Lighthead  þ 19:13, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I Have an Odd Question
I seem to fit the diagnosis for Hyperlexia III (except I understood fully well what I was reading; otherwise everything else seems accurate), however, I'm 22 now and my autistic-like symptoms have gotten worse, not better. I know that no one here is an expert, but what do you guys think about that? Also, the link to hyperlexia.net seems to be broken- all I get is a blank screen (but I'm running IE; that may explain it). SmallCheez (talk) 06:34, 11 December 2011 (UTC) It's probably coincident with Asperger's Syndrome, either at clinical or sub-clinical levels. I recommend checking out your local GRASP (Global/Regional Asperger's Syndrome Partnership). I also recommend watching My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, which greatly reduced my social symptoms and depression simultaneously. (You know, all the symptoms except the social inappropriateness of watching a cartoon for little girls.) --75.173.1.59 (talk) 06:31, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Reference #5
Reference number five in the references section is a broken link, there is no article and the page it links to is dead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Esmeralda.rupp (talk • contribs) 00:23, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Fixed. RCraig09 (talk) 01:46, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

"above normal ability to read coupled with a below normal ability to understand spoken language" or only "above normal ability to read"?
The initial paragraphs of the article gave the impression that hyperlexia is simply "above normal ability to read"; it is written in a way that makes the reader even think "why this is a syndrome"? MiguelMadeira (talk) 02:37, 12 July 2023 (UTC)