Exulansic Reads: Green Eggs and Ham

A twitter troll called it a fable when I explained that I was hyperlexic as a child due to being on the autism spectrum. In those days, I was considered to have "pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified" due to being high-functioning, and this was seen as distinct from both autism and Asperger syndrome. This category, PDD-NOS, no longer exists, as it was merged formally with autism in 2013 DSM V update. I am not self-diagnosed and I am not late-diagnosed. I was diagnosed and treated as a child and then the name of my diagnosis changed, which is why in the past I've mistakenly said that I am not autistic. I didn't get my Autwarts owl when the label for my condition changed to autism, though I was grouped with autistic and Asperger kids (so-termed under the old model) for therapy as a kid.

Anyway, here is the proof of my hyperlexia/atypical development. I was born in April 1987 and this video was taken in February 1990, so I was approximately 34 months old. I have other videos showing my mean length of utterance, a measure of language development which can be compared with what is normal (Brown's Stages of Morphological Development) for spontaneous language was like 8 at this same age. I could produce later developing sounds early, when focused, though when my attention is divided, I made more age-typical speech errors (th>d, for instance), which is what I've also seen in clinical practice with hyperlexic autistic toddlers and preschoolers.

Hyperlexic autism predicts social-pragmatic difficulties and other language developmental difficulties later on in childhood, adolescence and adulthood, which surprises caregivers as we are child prodigies in certain linguistic domains very early on. If you know a child who is capable of reading aloud from books at this age, please know they may benefit from evaluation and treatment by a qualified speech-language pathologist. It can help prepare them and their family for the predictable autistic-allistic social friction and other difficulties that go along with this atypical developmental track.

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