Hyperlexia was originally identified as an unusual learning style. Only in the last decade has hyperlexia become associated with the autism spectrum. There still seems to be much confusion and indeed disagreement with regard to hyperlexia, which I feel is to be expected in a disorder for which there is such terse history.

The following is a historical time-line taken from Lynn Richman's talk on Hyperlexia: Differential Patterns in Launguage Disorders, Noverbal LD, Asperger, Autism and Attention Deficit Disorder as presented at the Second National Conference on the Syndrome of Hyperlexia. Lynn Richman, Ph.D., is Professor and Director of the Division of Pediatric Psychology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. He also directs the Pediatric Learning Disorders Clinic.

-tjw

1960’s

First use of "Hyperlexia"

• Word decoding higher than comprehension
• May be an advanced specific brain development
• Possibly a learning superiority

1970’s

• Silverberg criteria
  • did not include comprehension deficit
• Hyperlexia became a learning disability
• Huttenlocker indicated language impairment
• Needleman suggested not necessarily language impaired

1980’s

• Cobrinik and Richman -- Impaired language became part of the criteria
• Healy gave criteria for syndrome of Hyperlexia
  1. Spontaneous reading of words before 5 years of age
  2. Impaired comprehension of reading and listening
  3. Word recognition above expectation based on linguistic or cognitive abilities
• Aram identified 2 subtypes of Hyperlexics
  1. Superior phonetic analysis
  2. Superior visual analysis
     • some comprehended single words, others did not

1990’s

• Pennington
  • associated hyperlexia with both Autism and right hemisphere disorder
• Rourke
  • associated Nonverbal LD with Hyperlexia and Asperger’s disorder
• Richman identified 2 Hyperlexic subtypes:
  1. Language Learning Disorder
  2. Visual-spatial-motor Learning Disorder

to be continued...