Foreign language learning, hyperlexia, and early word recognition

Children with hyperlexia read words spontaneously before the age of five, have impaired comprehension on both listening and reading tasks, and have word recognition skill above expectations based on cognitive and linguistic abilities. One student with hyperlexia and another student with higher word recognition than comprehension skills who started to read words at a very early age were followed over several years from the primary grades through high school when both were completing a second-year Spanish course. The purpose of the present study was to examine the foreign language (FL) word recognition, spelling, reading comprehension, writing, speaking, and listening skills of the two students and another high school student without hyperlexia. Results showed that the student without hyperlexia achieved higher scores than the hyperlexic student and the student with above average word recognition skills on most FL proficiency measures. The student with hyperlexia and the student with above average word recognition skills achieved higher scores on the Spanish proficiency tasks that required the exclusive use of phonological (pronunciation) and phonological/orthographic (word recognition, spelling) skills than on Spanish proficiency tasks that required the use of listening comprepension and speaking and writing skills. The findings provide support for the notion that word recognition and spelling in a FL may be modular processes and exist independently of general cognitive and linguistic skills. Results also suggest that students may have stronger FL learning skills in one language component than in other components of language, and that there may be a weak relationship between FL word recognition and oral proficiency in the FL.

Generally, children learn to read by being taught to do so when they enter school. However, children with hyperlexia learn to read words well before entry into school and often before, or in conjunction with, the onset of oral language (Aram 1997). Children with hyperlexia exhibit three primary characteristics: (1) spontaneous reading of words before the age of five; (2) impaired comprehension on both listening and reading tasks; and (3) word recognition (decoding) skill above expectations based on measured cognitive and linguistic abilities (Healy 1982). Studies with hyperlexic children have shown that the majority exhibit some degree of intellectual limitation and that many are classified as having borderline intelligence or as mildly retarded (Aram and Healy 1987). Nonetheless, researchers have found that children with hyperlexia read words very well although they have limited language comprehension and production (Glosser, Grugan, and Friedman 1997). In many of the studies, the outstanding reading ability of children with hyperlexia is accompanied by compulsive and ritualistic reading behavior (Rispens and Van Berckelaer 1991). However, Sparks (in press) has found that hyperlexic children may not remain voracious readers over time.

Researchers have questioned how children with hyperlexia learn to read words so well and at such a young age prior to formal reading instruction without understanding what they read. Although there is no consensus, some studies have shown that children with hyperlexia have a strong ability to utilize regular phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules and read pseudo (nonsense) words that follow phonological rules as well as or better than normal readers (see e.g., Frith and Snowling 1983; Glosser, Grugan, and Friedman 1997; Goldberg and Rothermel 1984; Siegel 1984). Some researchers have speculated that the efficient use of phoneme-grapheme conversion rules by hyperlexic children for reading and spelling words may be modular processes that exist independently of general linguistic and cognitive skills (O'Connor and Hermelin 1994; Siegel 1994). Some researchers have hypothesized that children with hyperlexia might have well-developed orthographic strategies for reading words (Aram, Rose, and Horwitz 1984; Temple 1990) or exceptional visual skills (Aram 1997). However, Healy et al. (1982) report research which shows that although children with hyperlexia are skilled in tasks requiring visual discrimination, they do poorly on visual-spatial tasks. Sparks (in press) has speculated that hyperlexic children may not exhibit orthographic strategies superior to those of normal readers. However, he did not rule out the possibility that the orthographic system of hyperlexic children was superior to normal readers when both groups were younger, but that the normal readers "caught up" in orthographic processing skill over time.

Given their poor language comprehension and production skills in their native language, learning to read, write, speak, and listen to a FL would be difficult for hyperlexic children. Sparks and his colleagues have posited that skill in native language learning serves as an indicator of FL learning ability, and also that a deficit in one native language component (e.g., semantics, or meaning) can lead to similar problems in the FL (i.e., the linguistic coding differences hypothesis) (Sparks 1995a; Sparks and Ganschow 1991, 1993a, 1995). One could speculate that a hyperlexic student could experience some success in learning to read and spell words in a FL if the language adhered to a fairly regular system of phoneme-grapheme correspondence and phonological rules. However, the student with hyperlexia likely would exhibit severe difficulties with language comprehension (listening, reading) and language production (speaking, writing) of the FL. Therefore, a hyperlexic student might do well in the phonological/orthographic aspects of the FL but poorly in the semantic, and perhaps syntactic, aspects of learning the FL.