Hyperlexia is a neurodevelopmental reading profile marked by precocious, self-taught word-decoding abilities that significantly outpace age expectations while co-occurring with difficulties in language comprehension, social communication, and pragmatic use of language. Most frequently observed in autistic populations, hyperlexia is defined by a pronounced dissociation between fluent decoding and limited semantic and contextual understanding. Rather than representing merely advanced reading, hyperlexia reflects an atypical pathway of language acquisition in which written symbols become a primary gateway to language, often substituting for socially mediated oral interaction. This paper situates hyperlexia as a topic of interest within the social sciences, arguing that it challenges normative assumptions about literacy development, cognition, and social interaction by demonstrating that technical literacy can emerge independently of shared meaning-making. Drawing on developmental psychology, education, disability studies, sociolinguistics and others, the discussion reframes hyperlexia as a socially and culturally embedded phenomenon rather than a purely cognitive anomaly. Central to this analysis is the proposed Triple-I Model, which conceptualizes comprehension in hyperlexia as arising from the impaired interaction of intersubjectivity, intertextuality, and interfacial communication. Together, these dimensions explain why children with hyperlexia may read with exceptional accuracy yet struggle to demonstrate functional understanding. The model underscores the need for instructional and therapeutic approaches that prioritize shared meaning, contextual linkage, and multimodal mediation over decoding-focused instruction alone.
Singh et al. (Wed,) studied this question.