Hyperlexia Hyperlexia Hyperlexia is a syndrome characterized by a child's precocious ability to read. It was initially identified by Norman E. Silberberg and Margaret C. Silberberg (1967), who defined it as the precocious ability to read words without prior training in learning to read, typically before the age of 5. They indicated that children with hyperlexia have a significantly higher word-decoding ability than their reading comprehension levels. Children with hyperlexia also present with an intense fascination for written material at a very early age. Hyperlexic children are characterized by having average or above-average IQs, and word-reading ability well above what would
Hyperlexia comprehension is the understanding of a longer text. In both studies, interpretation and meaning based tests proved difficult for the hyperlexic subjects. In the Weeks study, the subject was unable to identify characters based on the logographic aspect of the writing system, and in the Lee and Hwang study, priming was ineffective in decreasing reading times for hyperlexics. Although it is generally associated with autism, a 69-year-old woman appears to have been made hyperlexic because of a "cerebral infarction in the left anterior cingulate cortex and corpus callosum". Hyperlexia Hyperlexia is a syndrome characterized by a child's precocious ability to