Dyslexia Vs. Hyperlexia

Dyslexia Vs. Hyperlexia

By now most of us know what dyslexia is, thanks to movies and other awareness programs running in our immediate environment.

Let me give you a quick recap of a dyslexic!

Dyslexia is understood as a “neurological disorder”, which affects children and adults usually with reading. Dyslexia works on two different theories. One, “Phonological-Deficiency Theory” and two, “Magnocellular Theory”. (article by Ramus (2001) titled Dyslexia Talk of Two Theories)

The first theory, as we all would know that a dyslexic has problems decoding the written text. They have a problem recalling basic speech sounds (phonemes) that correspond to what they are visually seeing on paper. For example, they see the word bat but have a difficult time retrieving the sounds that the letters ‘b’, ‘a’ and ‘t’ make alone or in combination. Their brain finds it difficult to plot the letters to the sounds associated with each alphabet. This malfunction in neurological function deeply slows down a student from making the same growth in reading as their peers.

The second theory “Magnocellular Theory” on the flip side, argues there may also be subtle sensory defects in people with dyslexia as well. There is evidence that the brains of some people with dyslexia have “subtle neurological abnormalities” in both visual and auditory sensory areas. Magnocellular theorists believe that the phonological problems may be “caused by basic deficiency in hearing sounds, and that visual deficit might independently contribute to reading problems. (ref. Ramus 2001)

The article by Ramus (2001) continues by stating that the magnocellular theory is itself being challenged. There have been additional studies where “auditory processing [in people with dyslexia] has not been found to be impaired.” Those in the study who had both auditory problems and dyslexia were only around one-third of the subjects. While sensory deficiencies show up in people with dyslexia, the “prevalence and significance of such deficits remain uncertain” (Ramus, 2001).

Now, some light on what is HYPERLEXIA?

There has been a lot of work done on dyslexia. But, very little awareness has been around for hyperlexia.  If Dyslexia is a reading disability, hyperlexia is a comprehension disability!

What does that mean! Let’s try to understand it with the help of a scenario.

A child named Rahul, now aged 11 is a very intelligent child. At the age of 2 years, he can read big words like hippopotamus, at age 3, he is able to read full sentences. By age 5, he manages to read books above his age level. WOW! Great, isn’t it? Now, on the flip side to this, Rahul is very quiet, doesn’t mingle with people around him and comes across as a snobbish child. Slowly as the time progresses, the teachers tell the parents that Rahul  reads superfluously, but doesn't  understand the written word. His comprehension skills are very poor. Doesn't  find the right words to answer to what is asked! It seems like he knows a lot of things. But, we just can't get him to talk.

Rahul has hyperlexia. The more one learns about hyperlexia,  the more one realizes that his language acquisition was typical of children with hyperlexia,  as were his interests and strengths. He is very good at recognizing patterns; he's a visual learner. He likes routines. When he did start talking, he consistently mixed up pronouns. He still takes things very literally. Most children learn how to talk on their own, simply by being surrounded by spoken language. Then, after they've been talking for a while, someone very deliberately teaches them how to read. Children with hyperlexia  are just the opposite. They learn how to read simply by being surrounded by printed words. We don't really know how. Then, after they've been reading for a while, someone has to very deliberately work with them on how to communicate verbally.

Language and Learning Disorders

Important symptom is the language learning disorder seen in these children. Of those children who talk (some children with hyperlexia  are nonverbal), many show this language pattern:

• Early speech and language attempts are echolalic  (both immediate and delayed)
• Good auditory memory for rote learning, such as songs, the alphabet and numbers, as well as good visual memory
• Comprehension of single words (mainly nouns) is better than comprehension of sentences
• Learning language in chunks and transferring whole phrases into appropriate places (Gestalt processing)
• Obvious abnormalities in structure or content of speech, including stereotyped and repetitive speech, reversal of pronouns, and peculiar use of words or phrases
• Noticeable impairment in the ability to initiate or sustain a conversation, despite adequate speech.

Social and Interpersonal Development

Symptoms, some of which may be related to insufficiency in language comprehension, also are frequent in this faction of children. These are associated with social relatedness, pragmatic and behavioral issues, and may be associated with nonverbal learning disability:

• Non-compliant behaviors
• Ritualistic behaviors
• Self-stimulatory  behaviors (such as hand-flapping or fidgeting)
• Extreme need for sameness
• Difficulty with transitions
• Sensory sensitivities
• Tantrum behaviors
• General anxiety/specific unusual fears
• Difficulty in groups
• Difficulty in socializing with peers
• Sensitivity to loud machine noises
• Impaired ability to make peer friendships.

Differences between Developmental Dyslexia and Hyperlexia in a snapshot:

Dyslexia	Hyperlexia
Poor decoding	Superior decoding
Adequate listening comprehension	Poor listening comprehension
Reading Comprehension supersedes the decoding	Reading Comprehension inferior to decoding
spellings are below average	Spellings are above average
Average OR above average IQs	Below average to average IQs
Top-down processing	Bottom up processing and are data driven
They see the big picture, are concept driven	Use of Grapheme to Phoneme rules and word-specific tackling of pronunciation
Use of text-to-speech tools	Use of speech to text tools.
Clinical neurological symptoms usually are missing	Clinical Neurological symptoms are usually present.

Ref: Dyslexia and Hyperlexia: Diagnosis and Management of Developmental Reading ... By P. G. Aaron

These are few indications towards hyperlexics.  How do we help these children, we will see in the next article.

Further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlexia

http://www.yale.edu/eglab/pdf/ELGReprint.pdf

http://www.csld.org/HyperlexiaDefinition.htm