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Cognitive and language correlates of hyperlexia: evidence from children with autism spectrum disorders

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Abstract

Two studies were conducted to investigate the correlates of hyperlexia in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children with the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Study 1 involved 3 groups of school age children individually matched for word reading ability: 6 ASD hyperlexic children, 6 ASD non-hyperlexic children, and 6 typically developing children. Study 2 involved 2 ASD preschool hyperlexic boys, and a group of 21 typical children of similar word reading ability. In both studies, participants were administered several reading measures as well as measures of cognitive and linguistic abilities that have been associated with variations in typical and dyslexic reading, namely, vocabulary, phonological processes, and rapid naming. Results suggest that ASD hyperlexic reading differs from both typical and ASD non-hyperlexic reading. In particular, they suggest that hyperlexics learn to compute letter-sound relations implicitly, on the basis of statistical learning. Although the hyperlexic children could read nonwords as well as the typical and the ASD non-hyperlexic children, they performed significantly worse than these groups of children on a letter-sound knowledge task. They also performed relatively poorly on a phonological awareness task. It is suggested that hyperlexics’ indifference to language as a meaningful, communicative device may be the key to their exceptionally good and precocious development of word reading ability.

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Notes

  1. According to Newman et al. (2007), the characteristic discrepancy between single word reading and reading comprehension is revealed in an analysis controlling for differences in word reading ability between the hyperlexic and the typical children. This procedure is, however, surprising, given the authors’ assertion that the hyperlexics did not differ from controls on word reading ability, not even when taking into account differences in their chronological age. It is also not clear why the authors did not control for differences in single word reading ability in the other comparisons.

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Acknowledgments

The studies reported in this manuscript were possible thanks to a grant from the Conselho Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (CNPq, Brazil) to the first author. We thank the children, and both their parents and teachers, for their collaboration.

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Correspondence to Cláudia Cardoso-Martins.

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Cardoso-Martins, C., da Silva, J.R. Cognitive and language correlates of hyperlexia: evidence from children with autism spectrum disorders. Read Writ 23, 129–145 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-008-9154-6

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