Hyperlexia: Precocious Looking at or Examining Condition?

Hyperlexia initially appeared in the literature in a 1967 paper describing younger children with reading capabilities exceeding their language comprehension competencies (Silberberg & Silberberg, 1967). The preliminary sights of hyperlexia proposed that phrase recognition capabilities were being different from a child’s verbal performing.

Although hyperlexia is not a diagnostic term, it can be applied to explain youngsters with strange examining behaviors. The problem arises in defining the threshold involving typical looking through improvement and hyperlexia. Scientists disagree on definitions of hyperlexia, these kinds of as debating how considerably far more sophisticated the looking through skill desires to be as opposed to peers and no matter if the state-of-the-art looking at requirements to be paired with developmental disabilities (Zhang & Joshi, 2019). The lack of consensus on a definition would make looking into hyperlexia hard for psychological, instructional, and developmental experts.

Hyperlexia can be imagined of as the inverse of an additional studying problem named dyslexia. Studying comprehension is comprehended to be a advanced activity necessitating both adequate decoding capabilities and listening comprehension. A child’s decoding abilities and listening comprehension operate jointly to guidance their reading through comprehension. This is regarded as the very simple see of reading through (Hoover & Gough, 1990). The very simple see of reading is comprehended most effective by the equation: Decoding x Listening Comprehension = Reading Comprehension.

Kids with hyperlexia have great decoding techniques and poor listening comprehension resulting in low reading comprehension. Young children with dyslexia have bad decoding abilities with common to above normal listening comprehension, and their profile also outcomes in lower reading through comprehension. Exploration research as a full assist the hyperlexic profile as a child with good decoding potential and poor listening and examining comprehension (Zhang & Joshi, 2019). Small children with hyperlexia hence have impaired studying comprehension, a kind of precise studying disorder that positive aspects from intervention and accommodation.

Hyperlexic profiles can be divided into three main styles (Treffert, 2011):

Hyperlexia I: Neurotypical children who are greatest explained as precocious viewers. A lot of of these young children may have early access to examining materials. Some researchers argue that precocious looking through really should not be considered hyperlexia (Ostrolenk et al., 2017), and most concur that there is no intervention desired for neurotypical small children with highly developed studying techniques.

Hyperlexia II: Hyperlexia II is affiliated with autism spectrum disorder. Many autistic folks have unevenly created cognitive profile, and some have what is called a splinter talent (Treffert, 2014): a ability or desire that is unusually higher in comparison to a person’s other skills. It has been believed that involving 6%-20% of autistic kids also have hyperlexia (Ostrolenk et al., 2017).

Hyperlexia III: These young children have hyperlexia paired with some capabilities of autism, even though their social conversation profile may perhaps not align with the diagnostic conditions for autism. They may be sensitive to sensory data, echo language, and battle with changes in regimen. Having said that, they also show typical or close to-normal social communication competencies. Typically, these autistic-like qualities fade with age.

A regular analysis of hyperlexia will generally start off with a wide intelligence or developmental evaluate. Language screening, either done by a speech pathologist or a psychologist, is also very important. Word reading and examining comprehension are also assessed. At last, due to the fact of the solid overlap concerning hyperlexia and autism, autism-certain evaluation resources should really be administered. These can include a in depth developmental history, immediate testing, report critique, guardian surveys, and inventories of autistic qualities. Standard intervention suggestions involve speech/language therapy.