"It's like he's learning another language!"
Robyn sat with three-year-old Taylor in the office of a language therapist explaining the curious patterns of her son's speech. As a high school foreign language teach, Robyn was familiar with the predictable barriers her students came up against when they tried to learn French -- and her small son was hitting every one of them in his attempt to learn English. Without having heard the term hyperlexia, Robyn recognized the strange way Taylor was learning to talk and knew well the blank stares that came from not understanding the language around him. It might as well have been French to Taylor.
Imagine you're in another country with your phrase book tucked securely in your pocket. When you need to find the museum, you pull out your book and look up the phrase that translates, "how far is it to the museum?" When you're hungry, you look up, "Where is the restaurant?" When you're tired, you get a taxi and look up "Take me to the Hotel."
You manage to get through the day, but how much of the language have you actually learned? Do you know which words are verbs? Pronouns? Nouns? Can you take the individual parts of those phrases and mix and match them to make up a sentence that is not in your phrase book?
This is a hard task -- and it is what the child with symptoms of hyperlexia has to do. Linguists believe that it is easier for a child to learn a second language than it is for an adult. At around age 12, the child crosses a threshold and it becomes more difficult to acquire a second language. However, young hyperlexic children have trouble learning English, because the task is as hard for them as learning a second language after the age of 12 is for other people.
In the foreign land of hyperlexia, the children do not have the advantage of a phrase book to look at. They don't have a first language to fall back on. They only have their eyes and ears and a blank slate to record what they observe. What do they "write" on the blank slate? Anything and everything. Children with characteristics of hyperlexia tend to have strong memories for what they see and hear.
David's teacher is amused by his ability to repeat everything that is said in the classroom, word-for-word, exactly as it was spoken. This can be funny to watch, especially if he stands next to the teacher and mimics gestures along with repeating the words. But when David does this it is not because he sets out to entertain the class. It is because he has a gestalt approach to learning language. His strong memory lets him store and retrieve chunks or phrases -- or even whole conversations. The system breaks down when these chunks must be dissected and rearranged to form original thoughts. This is a challenge for hyperlexic kids.
Hand in Hand with gestalt processing of language goes the characteristic of echolalia. What you say, he says. You ask a question and expect an answer, but what you get is the same question echoed back. You make a comment and hop for a reaction, but you get a repetition of the same comment you made. The child may have a sense that a response is appropriate; but since he doesn't have words of his own, he uses yours. Having heard the phrase from you and repeated it back, the child now stores that bit of information until a time when it seems useful. Then you will hear the whole phrase against, in a gestalt manner.
Patrick and his mother had just spent a pleasant day together away from home. On the way home in the car, Martha said, "That was fun, wasn't it?" Patrick replied, "yeah, Mom, that was great sex!"
Patrick had picked up a phrase from a movie or television and tried to apply it without really understanding it.
Children with hyperlexic characteristics are creatures of habit, if ever there were such a thing. They like things to be the same. Exactly the same. One speech and language pathologist commented that she has to be very careful about how she handles the first session with a hyperlexic child, because the child will expect further sessions to be just the same. For eight or ten sessions in a row, Caleb insisted on putting together a floor puzzle of the United States, and because one time he and his mother stopped at a fast-food restaurant on the way to therapy, getting a roast beef sandwich now has to be part of the ritual.
Just as they echo language without modifying it appropriately, hyperlexics prefer that routines and habits not be interrupted. The constantly look for -- and find -- patterns all around them: the route to the grocery store (there can only be one), the sequence of bedtime stories, the television schedule ("What do you mean, 'Wheel of Fortune' is not on tonight?"), the same puzzle day after day, the number of houses the bus stops at on the way home. Their language is built around chunks that do not get broken up, and their behavior follows a similar principle. The child who prefers the security of the familiar is likely to resist a parent or teacher's attempt to break up a "behavioral chunk."
Language and behavior can be taught very specifically. It is important to understand that hyperlexic children with not "pick up" from the culture around them the way most children do. Given a demonstration of visual model, however, these children can use their strong memories to their advantage.
Caleb's parents met with a skeptical school psychologist who was not convinced that the out-of-control behavior she observed was linked to language difficulties. His parents argued that if his language improved, his behavior would settle down. "But how can he learn anything if he won't sit still and pay attention?" the psychologist asked.
This question is worth asking. Teachers and therapists of children with hyperlexic symptoms confirm that improved language does result in improved behavior. But how do you jump the behavior hurdle to get to the language?
In a presentation given at the Eight Annual Conference on the Language Disordered Child held in Oak Brook, Illinois in November 1992, Dr. Jan Healy used an illustration that defined the main functions of various parts of the brain. The cortex is the thinking part; here language is learned and abstract thinking develops. In contrast, the "reptilian" part of the brain is the most primitive part; its function is to keep you safe from the environment. The reptile is constantly in a state of waiting to t be stimulated by the environment. Reptilian responses are based on reflex -- finding food to survive, fleeing from attack, even aggressively attaching for self-preservation.
If a child's "reptile" brain is under too much stress from the environment -- the physical and emotional surroundings -- the cortex has no chance to be receptive to learning more complicated concepts. The reptilian part of the brain tends to be dominant in children who do not understand the world around them. The goal is to get the higher center of the brain in control of the lower center.
How do we do this? Healy's answer is "Make the child feel safe." If the child feels threatened or scared, you will see reflex, not cortical learning. A hug may be more effective than a scolding to prevent the behavior blow-up. At these moments, step back from the language issue and figure out why the child is feeling insecure.
Sometimes insecurity results simply from encountering the unfamiliar. Prepare the child for changes or new physical experiences before they happen. For instance, let the child feel safe and successful in a playgroup of three or four children before enrolling him or her in a preschool class of 15.
Try to help the distressed child downshift from the vigilant reptilian state by reducing the stress in the physical environment. This may mean offering simple explanations of what is happening. More often it means changing the physical circumstances. You can physically remove the child from the stressful situation, such as a noisy, crowded room, so that the reptile impulse can subside and the cortex can take control. Or you can remove something from the environment that is causing difficulty for the child. After the physical circumstances are controlled and the child feels safe, an explanation may be possible.
Most children learn through play. Many successful preschool programs are built on this theory. The kids have a grand time playing in the sandbox or the water table without realizing that they are learning science or art or language. They focus heavily on the concrete touch-and-feel experiences before moving up into the symbolic realm of reading.
In contrast, children with hyperlexia focus on the symbolic at the start. They learn to read before they talk. They use blocks to form letters rather than to build towers. They look at the legs supporting a table and see a H. They need to be led back to the basics and play in order to catch up on the concrete experience they often prefer to skip. Rather than discovering cause and effect through play, for instance, they need to be shown, visually and intentionally that one thing causes another.
"Get your children back into the sandbox," Dr. Healy says, "back to the water table, back to climbing trees, back to simple things. Don't focus on the symbolic to the exclusion of building those concrete skills."
In other words, help you child stay in touch with the physical environment. Find ways to explore it together so that it becomes less threatening. Help you child master the skills that involve touching and feeling the real world. While other children can discover concepts and principles on their own through play, the hyperlexic child needs concrete demonstrations.
If a child can process the stimulation from the physical surroundings more successfully, anxiety will lessen, the reptile will take a rest, and real learning can begin. Then language skills can be addressed head-on.