He will have problems putting the spoken word into a meaningful context. As the child progresses through school he will have an increasingly difficult time reading content area material and judging the relevance of this material or using it to defend or support his opinion. This is when reading comprehension becomes an issue.

             My first exposure to the word hyperlexia caused me to assume that it was a simple issue of reading with no comprehension. I have worked with two boys who could decode any word but had very poor comprehension. Hyperlexia, obviously covers a much wider range of issues than poor reading comprehension. Comprehension is masked in the young hyperlexic because of a high intelligence and great memory for repetition. They have the ability to repeat everything they have read or heard. As the child gets older he displays an increasing inability to read new information and apply it to his own world. It must be realized that these comprehension issues need to be addressed as language-comprehension issues, not as reading comprehension issues.

             The precocious reading ability will often emerge in the hyperlexic before the age of five. "Early speech and language attempts were echolalic (both immediate and delayed). Language was learned in chunks and whole phrases and even entire dialogues were used in conversation." (Barouski) Early speech may consist of saying letters rather than words. The skill of reading was not taught to the hyperlexic child and usually between the ages of 18 and 24 months his ability to name letters and numbers is amazing. "By three years they see printed words and read them, sometimes before they have learned to talk. They are fascinated by the printed word." (Kupperman, etal).

             AUTISM, PDD, NONVERBAL LEARNING DISABILITY?.

             In the early years hyperlexia shares many characteristics with autism. The most noticeable is the "inability to make meaningful eye contact, inability to build relationships, tantruming, screaming.