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Identifying and differentiating children with hyperlexia and its subtypes: A meta-analysis of results from WISC-III subtests and standardized reading tests.
Abstract
Hyperlexia is a term often associated with autism spectrum disorders. However, its place on or outside of the autistic spectrum is still very much a debatable topic. In this article, the authors presented their findings on 53 children with comprehension deficit or suspected hyperlexia (based on the diagnostic symptoms described in the Educator’s Diagnostic Manual of Disabilities and Disorders), aged between 10 and 14, of both genders, grouped according to four disorders that these children were diagnosed to have: (1) dyslexia (or specific learning disability); (2) non-verbal learning disability; (3) autistic disorder; and (4) Asperger syndrome. Based on selected results of the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (3rd Edition), the Oral and Written Language Scales: Listening Comprehension Scale and Oral Expression Scale, and the WISC-III, a meta-diagnostic analysis of the psycho-educational assessment results was done to identify and differentiate children with hyperlexia and its subtypes.
... The psychological perspective focuses on the symptomatic studies on the explicit traits of hyperlexia and etiological studies on the origin and causes of hyperlexia via psycho-educational, neurological, and medical diagnoses (Chia, 2002; Chia, Poh & Ng, 2009). Children whose " (measured) reading level was above their expected word recognition level by the following amounts: 1.5 in grades 1 and 2, and 2.0 in grades 3 and up " (Silberberg & Silberberg, 1967, p. 236) were described as hyperlexic. ...
... In other words, hyperlexia can be a disorder of language development (Joshi, Padakannaya, & Nishanimath, 2010) or a disability of social imperception (Grigorenko, Klin, & Volkmar, 2003) or even both (Cardoso-Martins & da Silva, 2010). To understand this concept, Chia, Poh and Ng (2009) have argued the need to understand that hyperlexia is a syndrome that results in a breakdown in both intertextuality and inter-subjectivity. Inter-textuality involves a reader's ability to establish the relationship between the given text and other relevant texts that he has encountered to interpret the text. ...
Children with hyperlexia display spontaneous superior word decoding ability before the age of five but impaired listening and reading comprehension. They have direct phonological processing of any given text with apparent ease and often well beyond their vocabulary usage. Though they can recognise and read words, words appear meaningless. As a result, it has been suggested that the word recognition skills and the general verbal functioning employed in the reading process probably exist separately and apart from each other. It may co-exist with non-verbal learning disorders and autism. In this paper, the authors did an action research study on the effectiveness of using the Scaffolding Interrogatives Method (SIM) to teach reading comprehension to a group of 10 eight-year-old children with hyperlexia at a private learning clinic. Findings suggested that mands and tacts were essential functional verbal components of the SIM to aid in answering reading comprehension questions.
... The point difference between PIQ (132) and VIQ (107) of Moses was 25 (see Table 1). According to Chia, Poh and Ng (2009), it is possible to have specific learning disorder/disability if the PIQ is significantly greater than the VIQ. He scored poorly with subtests of Arithmetic of 7 points and Digit Span (DS) of 9 points on the verbal scale and Symbol Search (SS) of 9 points on the performance scale subtests. ...
This paper presents single-subject case study of a 9 year-old boy with dyslexia. A
psycho-educational evaluation and profiling was done using the existing the
psychological assessment report and five literacy tests. Results indicated
significant differences for both verbal and performance subtests from the
psychological assessment using WISC-III. In addition, literacy tests showed that
the participant’s difficulties in reading (word recognition) due to his weak
phonological processing. Overall, this study provides substantiate empirical
evidence that is highly suggestive of developmental dyslexia that co-exists with
ADHD (inattentive type) and dysgraphia. Limitations and future recommendations
are also discussed in the study.
... The point difference between PIQ (132) and VIQ (107) of Moses was 25 (see Table 1). According to Chia, Poh and Ng (2009), it is possible to have specific learning disorder/disability if the PIQ is significantly greater than the VIQ. He scored poorly with subtests of Arithmetic of 7 points and Digit Span (DS) of 9 points on the verbal scale and Symbol Search (SS) of 9 points on the performance scale subtests. ...
This paper presents single-subject case study of a 9 year-old boy with dyslexia. A psycho-educational evaluation and profiling was done using the existing the psychological assessment report and five literacy tests. Results indicated significant differences for both verbal and performance subtests from the psychological assessment using WISC-III. In addition, literacy tests showed that the participant’s difficulties in reading (word recognition) due to his weak phonological processing. Overall, this study provides substantiate empirical evidence that is highly suggestive of developmental dyslexia that co-exists with ADHD (inattentive type) and dysgraphia. Limitations and future recommendations are also discussed in the study.
... It seems that these children with SLI are autistic-like, but they are not. While children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) do have comprehension deficit and are, therefore, hyperlexic (i.e., Type II Hyperlexia or Type III Hyperlexia), children with SLI may be hyperlexic but of a different kind, i.e., Type I Hyperlexia or hyperlexia per se (see Chia, Poh, & Ng, 2009). Although research to date has not been able to identify the different categories of subtypes of SLI (see), Muter and Likierman (2008) have proposed that it is useful to categorize such children according to the kind of language difficulty they display. ...
Very little research studies have been done in Singapore and Malaysia on children with specific language impairment (SLI). Although, it is still unclear what SLI exactly is, most professionals in this part of the world accept it as a specific learning difficulty (like dyslexia) because one set of skills (spoken language) is less well developed than another (visual-perceptual abilities). One of the biggest challenges that children with SLI face is to understand the verb morphology. Moreover, most teachers of English as a Second language (TESL) in Singapore and Malaysia have found the topic challenging to teach and more so when they have to teach active-passive/passive-active sentence transformation. In this study, 27 upper primary school children of Chinese descent – 12 from the Learning Disabilities Center, Singapore, and 15 from the EY Ucapan Klinik, Malaysia – were identified to manifest SLI and invited to participate in the research. The authors of this paper have chosen to examine the various verb pattern errors in active-passive/passive/active sentence transformation committed by these children and also suggested a pedagogical approach to teach active-passive sentence transformation.
... However, it is not found to be so in their reading comprehension. Hence, hyperlexia is often the suspect and the hyperlexia subtype is probably closer to the one that co-exists between Asperger Syndrome and visual-perceptual processing disorder (see Chia, Poh, & Ng, 2009, for more detail). In establishing the neuro-psycho-educational profile of a child with NVLD, Rourke (1985 Rourke ( , 1995 has suggested administration of the following testing procedure: Firstly, the target test should include a test of immediate visual memory by conducting the Reitan-Indiana Neuropsychological Test Battery (Rint-B) with the standard score that should be at least 1 Standard Deviation (SD) below the mean. ...
This paper provides a comprehensive introduction to aid our understanding of the nonverbal learning disorder (NVLD) – also known as the right hemisphere learning disorder – and its four main subtypes. It also examines the different models of NVLD that have been described in the current literature of learning disabilities and disorders in order to understand the complexity of this disorder, which also co-exists with other learning disorders such as autism spectrum disorder and mathematics learning disability. The author felt that NVLD should be rightly recognized as a syndrome, just like that of the Developmental Gerstmann Syndrome, rather than as a specific learning disorder.
48 college students either listened to or read 3 tape-recorded stories, each about 2,000 words in length. Immediately after processing each story, Ss wrote a summary in 60–80 words. A comparison of the summaries written after reading with those written after listening revealed only minor differences. Ss tended to include a little more idiosyncratic detail in their summaries after listening than after reading, but the shared content of the summaries remained remarkably unchanged. It is concluded that these results can aid in the identification of the common core of comprehension processes that underlie both listening and skilled reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examines the prevalence and diagnostic utility of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Third Edition (WISC–III), labeled SCAD, by comparing 363 students (aged 6–16 yrs) with learning and emotional disabilities to the WISC–III normative sample. Analyses took into account both the sensitivity and specificity of the SCAD Index across its full range of values via a Receiver Operating Characteristic analysis. Results indicate that the SCAD profile is neither a valid diagnostic indicator nor an important predictor of academic achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
WISC subtest patterns of 101 underachieving and 56 achieving fourth grade readers were determined and the results were contrasted with those from 20 previously published studies. The evidence indicates that the low information, arithmetic, and coding subtest pattern is characteristic of groups of disabled readers but not of individuals and that significantly high performance IQs are characteristic of about 20% of underachieves. The suggestion is made that research be directed toward discovering the possible significance of low subtest scores rather than toward pattern identification.
Hyperlexia is a condition occurring in a group of children who traditionally have been described as having word-recognition reading skills which far exceed their other language and cognitive abilities. The incidence of this particular skill in a group of children with pervasive developmental disorders had not previously been documented. In the state of North Dakota 68 children who meet DSM-III criteria for pervasive developmental disorders (including autism) have been identified. Four of these children show hyperlexia. This computes to a prevalence rate of 6.6% of school-aged children with pervasive developmental disorders.
Seven children who had unusually precocious word-recognition skills and otherwise had multiple significant developmental deviations were identified. Past findings are reviewed along with psychometric results and clinical observations of the seven hyperlexic children. Implications concerning the syndrome of hyperlexia and how this behavioral pattern may disrupt the acquisition of appropriate modalities of communication are discussed.
Eight hyperlexic children participated in the study. All had language delays, displayed difficulties in integrated behaviour and interpersonal relationships, and learned to read with little or no formal instruction (usually before the age of 5 years). Tests assessing cognitive and academic functioning were administered. In general, nonverbal skills were stronger than verbal skills. Reading ability was in the grade 4 to grade 6 range as based upon Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) Reading Recognition scores. A wide variety of tests assessing phonological and lexical reading routes, as well as metalinguistic processing, were also administered. It appeared that the hyperlexic children were able to reach the lexicon via both the visual-orthographic and phonological pathways. Error analysis indicated the former was preferred. Hyperlexic children had an organized, though limited, lexicon. Imagery had a significant effect on their reading. Further, they were able to comprehend single words and sentences, but not paragraphs. As only 3 of the 8 children seemed to have metalinguistic awareness, it becomes problematic whether the 'cognitive unconscious' is necessary for reading. Also, while the hyperlexic children might have acute visual registration mechanisms for written language, they have abstracted grapheme-phoneme transformation rules as indicated by their ability to read pseudowords.
Hyperlexia has been described as a unique disorder in which children notably delayed in language and cognitive development begin spontaneously to recognize words at a very early age and continue to develop surprisingly advanced word recognition skills. Although such divergent development is provocative for both theory and practice in reading, little research attention has been directed toward hyperlexia, and a systematic description of the reading behaviors of such children has never appeared. This study describes 12 such children in terms of cognitive, linguistic, and reading competencies. Extensive interviews and individual testing with each subject confirmed the presence of an identifiable syndrome of hyperlexia, characterized by word recognition before age 5, disordered cognitive and linguistic development, and word recognition skills notably superior to other tested abilities. Comprehension, while present for literal units, broke down when abstract or relational thinking beyond a perceptual level were required. Comparison of listening and reading comprehension indicated generalized comprehension deficits, and results of testing suggested that hyperlexic children are deficient in formation and organization of schemata for incoming experience. It is proposed that, despite its unique nature, the study of this syndrome may contribute to our understanding of both word recognition and comprehension and their relationship in the total reading process./// [Spanish] Se ha descrito hiperlexia como un trastorno singular en el que niños con retraso de lenguaje y desarrollo cognoscitivo, comienzan súbitamente a reconocer palabras a muy temprana edad y continúan a desarrollar reconocimiento de palabras avanzadas de una manera sorprendente. Aunque tal desarrollo divergente pone a prueba a ambas la teoría y la práctica de lectura, poco interés de investigación ha sido dirigido hacia hiperlexia, y una descripción sistemática de hábitos de lectura de estos niños nunca ha aparecido. Este estudio describe la destreza cognoscitiva, lingüística y de lectura de 12 niños en esta categoría especial. Entrevistas extensas y exámenes individuales con cada alumno confirmaron la presencia del sindrome identificable de hiperlexia, caracterizado por reconocimiento de palabras antes de los 5 años, desarrollo cognoscitivo y lingüístico divergente, y destreza de reconocimiento de palabras considerablemente superior a otras destrezas analizadas. Comprensión, aunque existente en unidades literales, cesó cuando se requería análisis abstracto o de relación más allá de un nivel perceptivo. La comparación de la habilidad de escuchar y entender y de la comprensión de lectura, indicó déficits generalizados de comprensión, y los resultados de los exámenes sugirieron que niños con hiperlexia sufren deficiencias en la formación y organización de esquemas para procesar experiencias nuevas. Se propone, que a pesar de su naturaleza única, el estudio de este síndrome puede contribuir hacia nuestra compensión de ambos, reconocimiento de palabras y de comprensión, y de su relación en el proceso total de lectura./// [French] L'hyperlexie a été décrite comme désordre unique au cours duquel les enfants notamment retardés dans le domaine du langage et du développement cognitif, commencent spontanément à reconnaitre les mots à un très jeune âge et continuent à développer des compétences de reconnaissance de mots étonnamment avancés. Bien qu'un tel développement divergent soit stimulant pour la théorie et la pratique en lecture, on a dirigé une attention de recherche moindre vers l'hyperlexie, et par conséquent une description systématique des comportements de lecture chez de tels enfants n'a jamais pris jour. Cette étude décrit 12 enfants en termes de compétences de lecture, de cognition, et de linguistique. Des entrevues considérables et des séries de tests individuels avec chaque sujet ont confirmé la présence d'un syndrome identifiable d'hyperlexie, caractérisé par la reconnaissance de mots avant l'âge de 5 ans, un développement linguistique et cognitif désordonné, et des compétences de reconnaissance de mots notamment supérieures à d'autres capacités testées. Tandis que la compréhension est présente dans les unités littérales, elle diminue lorsque une reflexion abstraite et de rapport au delà d'un niveau perceptif est requise. Une comparaison de compréhension d'écoute et de lecture a indiqué des déficits de compréhension généralisée et des résultats de tests ont suggéré que les enfants hyperlexiques manquent de formation et d'organisation de schémas pour toute expérience reçue. On a proposé qu'en dépit de sa nature unique, l'étude de ce syndrome peut contribuer à un meilleur entendement de la reconnaissance de mots et de leur compréhension et leurs rapports dans le procédé total de lecture.
To clarify the role of decoding in reading and reading disability, a simple model of reading is proposed, which holds that reading equals the product of decoding and comprehension. It follows that there must be three types of reading disability, resulting from an inability to decode, an inability to comprehend, or both. It is argued that the first is dyslexia, the second hyperlexia, and the third common, or garden variety, reading disability.
Current definitions of reading disability or dyslexia all involve the existence of a discrepancy between reading ability and measured intelligence. It is argued here that the use of intelligence as an aptitude benchmark in the definition of dyslexia conceals illogical assumptions about the concept of potential. The author suggests instead the use of a more educationally relevant aptitude measure, such as listening comprehension. However, all discrepancy definitions predicated on mismatches between aptitude and achievement are called into question by findings that the acquisition of literacy fosters the very cognitive skills that are assessed on aptitude measures. These findings undermine the logic of discrepancy measurement by weakening the distinction between aptitude and achievement. The author concludes that the validity of a severe discrepancy between aptitude and achievement as the defining feature of dyslexia has yet to be established to a degree that would justify differential educational classification or treatment. /// [French] Les définitions actuelles des troubles de lecture ou dyslexie postulent généralement des écarts entre le niveau d'aptitudes intellectuelles tel que mesuré par les tests standardisés et le niveau d'habiletés en lecture. Le point de vue défendu dans cet article est que le fait d'utiliser l'intelligence comme critère dans la définition de la dyslexie repose sur des postulats non fondés quant au concept de potentiel intellectuel. L'auteur propose d'utiliser plutôt des critères académiques, tels que la compréhension verbale. Malgré tout, toutes hypothèses prédisant des écarts entre des types d'aptitudes et des habiletés interreliées sont sujettes à caution dans la mesure où des données de recherche montrent que le développement des habiletés écrites influence le développement des aptitudes cognitives qui sont mesurées par les tests standardisés. Ces données jettent un doute sur la logique qui sous-tend ces hypothèses quant à l'existence d'écarts entre aptitudes cognitives et habiletés en lecture en minimisant la distinction entre aptitudes et habiletés. L'auteur conclut que l'existence de différences importantes entre aptitudes cognitives et habiletés en lecture comme critère de définition de la dyslexie reste à démontrer si l'on veut justifier le bien fondé de classements et de traitements différents des enfants dyslexiques. /// [Spanish] Las definiciones actuales de dificultades de lectura o dislexia envuelven todas la existencia de una discrepancia entre habilidad de lectura e inteligencia medida. Se argumenta aquí que el uso de la inteligencia como una marca de aptitud en la definición de dislexia esconde razonamientos ilógicos acerca del concepto de potencial. El autor sugiere en cambio, el uso de una medida más relevante educativamente de medición de aptitudes, tal como la comprensión oral. Sin embargo, todas las definiciones de discrepancia predicadas en las uniones equivocadas entre aptitud y logro son cuestionadas por los hallazgos de que la adquisición de la lectura promueve las mismas habilidades cognitivas que se miden en las medidas de aptitud. Estos hallazgos minan la lógica de la medida de discrepancia al debilitar la distinción entre aptitud y logro. El autor concluye que la validez de una severa discrepancia entre aptitud y logro como la marca que define a la dislexia aún está por establecerse a un grado tal que justificara la clasificación educativa o el tratamiento diferencial. /// [German] In allen derzeitigen Definitionen über Lesestörung oder Legasthenie ist eine Diskrepanz zwischen Lesefähigkeit und gemessener Intelligenz vorhanden. An dieser Stelle wird argumentiert, daß die Verwendung des Faktors Intelligenz-als eine Eignungsbewertung bei der Definition von Legasthenie-die unlogische Annahme eines Potentialkonzepts verschleiert. Stattdessen schlägt der Verfasser vor, eine Eignungsmaßnahme anzuwenden, die stärker auf die Schulbildung anwendbar ist, wie z.B. das Hörverständnis. Alle Diskrepanzdefinitionen, die auf der Fehlanpassung zwischen Eignung und Leistung basieren, wurden durch die Feststellung in Frage gestellt, daß der Erwerb der Lesefähigkeit genau diejenigen kognitiven Fertigkeiten fördert, die anhand von Eignungsmaßnahmen festgelegt werden. Der Verfasser schließt daraus, daß die Gültigkeit einer wesentlichen Diskrepanz zwischen Eignung und Leistung als das definierende Merkmal für Legasthenie noch in gewissem Grade festgelegt werden muß, damit eine differentielle Bildungsklassifizierung oder Bildungsmaßnahme berechtigt wäre.
This is a case study of a left-handed, preschool boy of superior intelligence who read very early and at a level well beyond what his IQ would predict. He is developmentally normal with no signs of autism or related disorders. His reading age was 9.3 at age 2–11 and 11.2 at 4-2; these levels are considerably beyond what would be predicted by his IQ or language age. He was able to read nonwords and both regular and irregular words equally well, indicating his mechanisms of lexical access in reading are similar to those of normal readers. Unlike classical hyperlexics, his reading comprehension for both single words and sentences was well above age level. When his precocious reading first appeared, he was also advanced in reading-related linguistic skills, such as phoneme awareness, auditory verbal short-term memory, and word retrieval, but not in visuospatial skills. These results imply that neither pathological language and/or social development, nor pathological variation in the normal mechanisms of lexical access in reading are necessary causes for reading precocity in early childhood. A model for integrating subtypes of precocious readers with subtypes of normal and dyslexic readers is proposed.
Studies on Asperger Syndrome (ASP) and autism (AUT) are synthesized and reviewed in terms of the (a) historical perspective, (b) clinical and diagnostic criteria, and (c) empirical data. The results of the synthesis suggest that these two groups of children differ in cognitive and adaptive behavior functioning and, as such, do not fall on the same autistic continuum. A meta-analysis procedure compares children and adolescents with ASP to study participants with AUT on various cognitive measures and using various adaptive behavior scales. The mean effect size for the category of cognitive functioning was + 0.98 in favor of ASP, whereas for adaptive behavior functioning it was + 0.86—again in favor of ASP. Overall, the results of the meta-analysis suggest that children and adolescents with ASP perform better than those with AUT on intelligence and cognitive measures as well as measures of adaptive behavior functioning. The results, therefore, suggest that ASP can be viewed as a distinct diagnostic category and can be separated from children with AUT.
Since publication in its first edition the Handbook of Psychological Testing has become the standard text for organisational and educational psychologists. It offers the only comprehensicve, modern and clear account of the whole of the field of psychometrics. It covers psychometric theory, the different kinds of psychological test, applied psychological testing, and the evaluation of the best published psychological tests. It is outstanding for its detailed and complete coverage of the field, its clarity (even for the non-mathematical) and its emphasis on the practical application of psychometric theory in psychology and education, as well as in vocational, occupational and clinical fields. For this second edition the Handbook has been extensively revised and updated to include the latest research and thinking in the field. Unlike other work in this area, it challenges the scientific rigour of conventional psychometrics and identifies groundbreaking new ways forward.
This monograph describes the third edition of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III) and its relationship to reading/learning disabilities. It is designed for educators and students in education who want to go beyond the numerical values of the WISC-III intelligence quotients and understand the implications of the scores for the assessment and instruction of individual students. Chapter 1 discusses the use of intelligence tests and the WISC-III. The organization and administration of the WISC-III are addressed in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 describes each subtest as to the task involved, what purportedly is being measured, method of scoring, possible implications of high and low scores, and suggested relationships to reading. Chapter 4 presents procedures for analyzing WISC-III scores as a means of generating hypotheses about students' cognitive strengths and weaknesses that may affect reading ability. The final chapter discusses the research base by providing an overview of the research literature on the WISC series and reading/learning disabilities. Appendices include a WISC-III record form, a WISC-III data sheet, and an evaluation form that includes abilities measured by two or more WISC-III subtests. (Contains 74 references.) (CR)
The need for clear criteria necessary for special arrangements for the GCSE is put forward in the context of increasing numbers of referrals of candidates with specific learning difficulties. Slow writing speed is suggested as a difficulty where there is a lack of research and appropriate published tests. Psychologists, however, are expected to evaluate a candidate's performance and make recommendations regarding extra time. The small scale study described below looks at a number of factors, including the predictive validity of short tests of a few minutes duration. Problems with such tests are explored and areas for further research are suggested.
Discusses the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to the study of nonverbal learning disabilities in children. Related studies on social perception, methods of identification and assessment of nonverbal learning problems, and the use of the Pupil Rating Scale as a screening device are reviewed. Case illustrations are included. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Although a variety of professionals regularly evaluate large numbers of children with learning problems, very little exists in the way of uniform standards or approaches, either within or across disciplines. This unique work synthesizes—in one accessible volume—the available information on learning disorders from such relevant disciplines as education, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, and child psychiatry. Presenting the state of the art in both research and practice, "Diagnosing Learning Disorders" combines a comprehensive review of the etiology and neuropsychology of each disorder with a detailed section on diagnosis and treatment.
Part I covers background issues that are important for understanding subsequent chapters on specific learning disorders. The author provides a neuropsychological framework for the nosology that is used and delineates the validity of the diagnostic approach being proposed. Providing a format for reviewing what is known about each of the disorders, he discusses the clinical processes of making diagnostic decisions and providing feedback. The relationships between symptoms, history, behavioral observations, test data, and the diagnostic conclusion are analyzed. Guidelines for communicating a diagnosis to parents, the children themselves, and other professionals are included.
In Part II, each chapter focuses on a specific learning disorder. These include: dyslexia and other developmental language disorders, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, right hemisphere learning disorders, autism spectrum disorder, and acquired memory disorders. Each chapter is divided into two sections, one reviewing the research on the disorder and the other considering differential diagnosis and treatment options. Each chapter offers a basic definition of the disorder and takes into account four levels of analysis: etiology, brain mechanisms, neuropsychological phenotype, and symptoms. Detailed case presentations are provided to help clinicians become more proficient at the differential diagnosis of these common problems of childhood. Rounding out the volume, Part III examines the implications for research and practice.
Both scholarly and clinically practical, "Diagnosing Learning Disorders" is a valuable resource for neuropsychologists, school psychologists, speech and language pathologists, special educators, child psychiatrists, and pediatricians. It also serves as a text for graduate courses on learning disabilities, developmental disabilities, cognitive assessment, and developmental neuropsychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Hyperlexia is the developmental disorder in which children decode words early but have significant impairments in aural and reading comprehension. Here, the literature describing hyperlexia is reviewed, including associated cognitive characteristics, neurobiological bases, and language and reading abilities. A study of 12 children with hyperlexia is summarized, illustrating the dissociation between decoding and comprehension skills, the superiority of phonologic over orthographic reading strategies, and the limited use of meaningful context to aid decoding. Implications for intervention with children with hyperlexia center on the importance of targeting meaningful comprehension of both aural and written language.
(C) 1997 Aspen Publishers, Inc.
Clinical interpretation of subtest score profiles on intelligence tests is a common practice. The ACID profile found on Wechsler's scales has been widely accepted as a clinical indicator which has both diagnostic and treatment implications. However, this practice has been based on clinical rather than empirical evidence. This study examines the discriminant and predictive validity of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) ACID profile among 612 students with learning disabilities. Analyses included diagnostic utility statistics (sensitivity, selectivity, etc.) and ROC methods as well as correlational and descriptive statistics. Results indicated that the ACID profile does not efficiently separate children with disabilities from those without disabilities, and further, there is no ACID cutting score which significantly exceeds chance discriminatory power. Likewise, the ACID profile did not robustly predict academic achievement among children with learning disabilities. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
In Mindblindness, Simon Baron-Cohen presents a model of the evolution and development of "mindreading." He argues that we mindread all the time, effortlessly, automatically, and mostly unconsciously. It is the natural way in which we interpret, predict, and participate in social behavior and communication. We ascribe mental states to people: states such as thoughts, desires, knowledge, and intentions.
Building on many years of research, Baron-Cohen concludes that children with autism, suffer from "mindblindness" as a result of a selective impairment in mindreading. For these children, the world is essentially devoid of mental things.
Baron-Cohen develops a theory that draws on data from comparative psychology, from developmental, and from neuropsychology. He argues that specific neurocognitive mechanisms have evolved that allow us to mindread, to make sense of actions, to interpret gazes as meaningful, and to decode "the language of the eyes."
Bradford Books imprint
Six severely disturbed boys who demonstrated unexpected rote reading abilities despite profound developmental arrest were studied in terms of current functioning (WISC, ITPA) and through retrospective interviews with parents for the origins and development of reading and reading-related abilities. The results showed a specific, shared pattern consisting of severe language deficit, tendencies toward perseverative action, and, as the necessary condition, the early manifestation of acute visual imagery and recall. The latter occurred despite generalized instability involving poorly controlled attention and deviant visual regard. The results supported, with some modification, the deficit hypothesis of Scheerer, Rothman, and Goldstein (1945) in accounting for the existence of unusual abilities in developmentally arrested individuals.
The learning of a natural language is considered to be an important aspect of man-machine communication in human language. The methods of the Russian language knowledge representation and acquisition implemented in the experimental under-standing system TULIPS-2 are described. These methods provides for understanding utterances that contain words and structures unknown to the system wherther they are grammatical or erroneous items, or the user's speech peculiarities.
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A sample of boys aged from 5 to 10 yr with no demonstrable neurological dysfunction, hearing loss or mental retardation, who had a current severe developmental disorder of the understanding of spoken language were examined using standard psychological tests of cognitive, linguistic and social behaviour, together with a standardized interview administered to the parents. Results showed that within this group children diagnosed as autistic had a more deviant language development than nonautistic children, had a more severe comprehension defect, had a more extensive language disability (in that it involved several different modalities), and also showed a defect in the social usage of the language they possessed. There were very few differences in the pattern of nonlinguistic skills, and it is concluded that a language disability is probably necessary for the development of the behavioural syndrome of autism.
Mentally retarded children who can read aloud written words better than one would expect from their Mental Age are often called hyperlexic. The reading comprehension thought to be impaired in such children was investigated in four experiments. Mentally retarded advanced decoders, including autistic and nonautistic children, were compared with younger nonretarded children matched for Mental Age and Reading Age. Experiment 1 established that mildly mentally retarded readers could match sentences to pictures as well as could be expected from their verbal ability. This was the same whether they read the sentences or heard them. Experiment 2 demonstrated that only the more able retarded subjects, but not the less able ones, used sentence context in a normal way in order to pronounce homographs. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that these same more able children could extract meaning at both sentence and story level, and their performance was indistinguishable from that of normal controls. Hence, it is doubtful whether these advanced decoders should be called hyperlexic. In contrast, the readers of relatively low verbal ability performed much worse than their normal controls. Although they could be induced under certain conditions to read sentence-by-sentence rather than word-by-word, they did not do so spontaneously. Furthermore, they did not make use of already existing general knowledge in order to answer questions about the stories they had read. The ability to comprehend in terms of large units of meaning seems to be specifically impaired in these low verbal ability fluent readers. We suggest that it is this impairment that marks true hyperlexia. Since there were no differences between autistic and nonautistic readers on any of our tasks, we conclude that hyperlexia is not an autism-specific phenomenon.
This is a case study of a left-handed, preschool boy of superior intelligence who read very early and at a level well beyond what his IQ would predict. He is developmentally normal with no signs of autism or related disorders. His reading age was 9.3 at age 2-11 and 11.2 at 4-2; these levels are considerably beyond what would be predicted by his IQ or language age. He was able to read nonwords and both regular and irregular words equally well, indicating his mechanisms of lexical access in reading are similar to those of normal readers. Unlike classical hyperlexics, his reading comprehension for both single words and sentences was well above age level. When his precocious reading first appeared, he was also advanced in reading-related linguistic skills, such as phoneme awareness, auditory verbal short-term memory, and word retrieval, but not in visuospatial skills. These results imply that neither pathological language and/or social development, nor pathological variation in the normal mechanisms of lexical access in reading are necessary causes for reading precocity in early childhood. A model for integrating subtypes of precocious readers with subtypes of normal and dyslexic readers is proposed.
Eight hyperlexic children participated in the study. All had language delays, displayed difficulties in integrated behaviour and interpersonal relationships, and learned to read with little or no formal instruction (usually before the age of 5 years). Tests assessing cognitive and academic functioning were administered. In general, nonverbal skills were stronger than verbal skills. Reading ability was in the grade 4 to grade 6 range as based upon Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) Reading Recognition scores. A wide variety of tests assessing phonological and lexical reading routes, as well as metalinguistic processing, were also administered.
It appeared that the hyperlexic children were able to reach the lexicon via both the visual-orthographic and phonological pathways. Error analysis indicated the former was preferred. Hyperlexic children had an organized, though limited, lexicon. Imagery had a significant effect on their reading. Further, they were able to comprehend single words and sentences, but not paragraphs. As only 3 of the 8 children seemed to have metalinguistic awareness, it becomes problematic whether the ‘cognitive unconscious’ is necessary for reading. Also, while the hyperlexic children might have acute visual registration mechanisms for written language, they have abstracted grapheme-phoneme transformation rules as indicated by their ability to read pseudowords.
Twenty boys meeting the current DSM III criteria for infantile autism at the time of diagnosis were found to be hyperlexic in childhood and have been followed up for 7-17 years. The most striking feature of the group was the compulsion to decode written material without comprehension of its meaning, and this constituted a behavioral phenotype for this population. On word recognition tests such as the WRAT, they scored significantly higher than would be predicted on the basis of intelligence but demonstrated severe reading retardation on tests of reading comprehension such as the Gates-McGinitie. Major differences in intelligence were detected, ranging from severe mental retardation to very superior intelligence. Major differences in verbal and nonverbal abilities were also noted. Many were found to have unusually good memory, both visual and auditory, and the majority possessed an excellent stored vocabulary that could be used with written words despite the poverty of their expressive language. It is suggested that the presence of hyperlexia may identify a subgroup of autistic children.
Twelve children with early intense reading and superior word recognition skills coupled with disordered language and cognitive behavior are described. Cognitive, linguistic, and reading measures evidenced a generalized cognitive deficit in forming superordinate schemata which was not specific to visual or auditory modalities. Positive family histories for reading problems were present for 11 of the 12 children, suggesting a relationship between hyperlexia and dyslexia.
The Pre-Linguistic Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (PL-ADOS) is a semistructured observation scale designed for use as a diagnostic tool for children less than 6 years old who are not yet using phrase speech and are suspected of having autism. The PL-ADOS takes approximately 30 minutes to administer and is appropriate for use with this population because of its emphasis on playful interactions and the use of toys designed for young children. Reliability studies indicated that both individual activity ratings and summary ratings could be reliably scored from videotaped assessments by naive raters. Additionally, PL-ADOS scores of nonverbal preschool-aged children referred for clinical diagnosis and classified on the basis of a diagnostic team's clinical judgment, clearly discriminated between autistic and nonautistic developmentally disabled children. The resulting diagnostic algorithm is theoretically linked to diagnostic constructs associated with ICD-10 and DSM-IV criteria for autism.
Intelligence (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children R and III, 1992) and written language attainment (BAS Word Reading, Neale Analysis of Reading, Vernon Graded Word Spelling) data for around 250 children attending a specialist school for dyslexics are presented. The Wechsler scales data show some evidence for 'ACID' and 'SCAD' profile effects on the subtests, with specifically weak Index scores on Freedom from Distractibility and Processing Speed. The relationship between intelligence and reading development is also examined, with evidence for significant correlations between intelligence and written language and a longitudinal study showing that there is no 'Matthew' or drop-off effect in intelligence. The attainments tests demonstrate that the widening gap between a dyslexic's chronological age and his/her attainments can be closed, and how attainments may be monitored within the context of 'growth curves'. The results are discussed in relation to recent reports (e.g. B.P.S. on Dyslexia, Literacy and Psychological Assessment) on the relationship between intelligence and attainments and it is concluded that this report could be seriously misleading for practising educational psychologists.
The syndrome of hyperlexia vs. high functioning autism and Asperger’s syndrome
- P Kupperman
- S Bligh
- K Barouski
Kupperman, P., Bligh, S., and Barouski, K. (n.d.). The syndrome of hyperlexia vs. high functioning autism and Asperger’s syndrome. Retrieved May 16, 2008, from http://www.hyperlexia.org/gordy001.html
Hyperlexia: A review of extraordinary word recognition Neuropscyhology of talent and special abilities Hyperlexia rJournal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals: Winter
- D M Aram
- J M Healy
Aram, D.M., and Healy, J.M. (1987). Hyperlexia: A review of extraordinary word recognition. In L.K. Obler and D. Fein (Eds.), Neuropscyhology of talent and special abilities. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Hyperlexia rJournal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals: Winter 2009, pp.71-99 Page 27 Autism Support Network (2002). Hyperlexia. Retrieved April 1, 2006, from http://www.bbbautism.com/other_conditions.htm