Hyperlexia—Specific Word Recognition Skills in Young Children

For children who are successful in reading, it is usually assumed that school will not be a stressful or anxiety-provoking experience. It has been the authors' experience, however, that this may not necessarily be so. A number of school children have been encountered who are subjected to certain stresses in school because they can read-or rather, because their ability to recognize words is on a higher level than their ability to comprehend and integrate them. Because elementary teachers probably equate word recognition skills with intellectual functioning, the demands put on these children may be greater than they can handle. Expectations, both by teachers and parents, are unrealistically high, and the child's inability to meet these expectations could create environmental stress and an accompanying high level of anxiety. For this phenomenon of specific word recognition skill we have coined the term hyperlexia. The concept of hyperlexia suggests a continuum of word recognition skills which may exist separate and apart from general verbal functioning. A concept describing dyslexia in a similar manner was proposed by Meyer and Larsen in Scandinavia (Hallgren, 1950), but has not been generally accepted in this country. In more than 20 cases examined by the authors, the children ranged in intellectual functioning from mentally defective to bright normal. In each case, the child's ability to recognize words was significantly higher than either his ability to comprehend the material "read" or his evaluated verbal functioning level. More than half of these children had