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Hyperlexia in autistic adults

Lotus

Recently the subject of hyperlexia came up on another thread where I briefly discussed it, but I've since been wondering if it can help mask autism.

Hyperlexia in children is categorized by word reading ability well above what would be expected for their age, and an intense fascination for written material from an early age. It is now thought that there are three types of hyperlexia, and type 2 occurs in children with autism - they often prefer books and magnetic letters over other toys, and frequently remember important numbers like license plates and birth dates.

In adults, hyperlexia includes preferring written communication over verbal conversation, feeling more comfortable writing than speaking, a love of language, patterns & wordplay, and getting lost in a book. Here is a link to a fuller description:

https://www.sagebrushcounseling.com/blog/hyperlexia-in-adults

I'm wondering if an ability to be incredibly articulate in writing helps mask verbal communication problems?

Parents

  • I devoured fiction as a child, especially sci fi/fantasy. In stories, you got to read what the characters were thinking/feeling, so yeah I think it helps give you language to talk about things that autsics find tricky. I much prefer written communication because I have a much bigger written vocabulary, where as I can flustered speaking. And we tend to have subtitles on, although this was initially to help my husbands hearing issues, but I do read them. And I as I work mostly online, it does mask my social problems. I don't know if it's related, by when learning languages, the  writting/reading part is the easiest bit.

    My son could read by 3 1/2. He constantly wanted to know what everything said, and I always decoded phonetically. So he seemed really bright. Till he got to primary school and he blanked when he had to answer/write anything down. The teachers knew he was very capable with reading so treated him at lazy/distracted at first, so yeah it definitely masked it at first for him too.

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  • I devoured fiction as a child, especially sci fi/fantasy. In stories, you got to read what the characters were thinking/feeling, so yeah I think it helps give you language to talk about things that autsics find tricky. I much prefer written communication because I have a much bigger written vocabulary, where as I can flustered speaking. And we tend to have subtitles on, although this was initially to help my husbands hearing issues, but I do read them. And I as I work mostly online, it does mask my social problems. I don't know if it's related, by when learning languages, the  writting/reading part is the easiest bit.

    My son could read by 3 1/2. He constantly wanted to know what everything said, and I always decoded phonetically. So he seemed really bright. Till he got to primary school and he blanked when he had to answer/write anything down. The teachers knew he was very capable with reading so treated him at lazy/distracted at first, so yeah it definitely masked it at first for him too.

Children