I can't believe another week of school has gone by! This weekend is homecoming in my hometown of Oconomowoc so my night will be filled with a parade and a football game. I hope your weekend will be filled with something you are looking forward to!
Many people have heard of Dyslexia, but most people have never heard of Hyperlexia.
What is Hyperlexia?
Most experts agree that hyperlexia describes a reading decoding level that is unexpected (advanced) when compared to intellectual functioning and/or age. Children with hyperlexia have better reading decoding abilities than reading comprehension abilities. They decode both phonetically and by sight reading. Often these children also experience difficulty with auditory/language processing, they think very literally, and they are a pattern learner. Schema building (a process in which new information is integrated into a network of prior knowledge, or a schema, so that students recognize connections to previously learned material and see how they can apply prior knowledge to new situations.) is very important for these children because they struggle with the ability to attach words to their experiences and may not understand multiple meaning words. One pitfall for these kids is that his/her high level decoding skills mask his/her comprehension deficits so often it is just assumed that his/her comprehension is as strong as his/her decoding. The major issue for students with hyperlexia as they get older is higher level language tasks and reading comprehension. The most important thing to remember for ALL students is to use his/her strengths to develop deficit areas.
Hyperlexia Symptoms
• A precocious ability to read words far above what would be expected at a child’s age
• Child may appear gifted in some areas and extremely deficient in others
• Significant difficulty in understanding verbal language
• Difficulty in socializing and interacting appropriately with people
• Abnormal and awkward social skills
• Specific or unusual fears
• Fixation with letters or numbers
• Echolalia (Repetition or echoing of a word or phrase just spoken by another person)
• Memorization of sentence structures without understanding the meaning
• An intense need to keep routines, difficulty with transitions, ritualistic behavior
Additional Symptoms:
• Normal development until 18-24 months, then regression
• Listens selectively / appears to be deaf
• Strong auditory and visual memory
• Self-stimulatory behavior (hand flapping, rocking, jumping up and down)
• Think in concrete and literal terms, difficulty with abstract concepts
• Auditory, olfactory and / or tactile sensitivity
• Difficulty answering "Wh–" questions, such as "what," "where," "who," and "why"
• A precocious ability to read words far above what would be expected at a child’s age
• Child may appear gifted in some areas and extremely deficient in others
• Significant difficulty in understanding verbal language
• Difficulty in socializing and interacting appropriately with people
• Abnormal and awkward social skills
• Specific or unusual fears
• Fixation with letters or numbers
• Echolalia (Repetition or echoing of a word or phrase just spoken by another person)
• Memorization of sentence structures without understanding the meaning
• An intense need to keep routines, difficulty with transitions, ritualistic behavior
Additional Symptoms:
• Normal development until 18-24 months, then regression
• Listens selectively / appears to be deaf
• Strong auditory and visual memory
• Self-stimulatory behavior (hand flapping, rocking, jumping up and down)
• Think in concrete and literal terms, difficulty with abstract concepts
• Auditory, olfactory and / or tactile sensitivity
• Difficulty answering "Wh–" questions, such as "what," "where," "who," and "why"
