Our DD16 is very, very similar to Mana's description of her DD. And I agree, I think she sees patterns much more easily than others, and the is part of what explains her areas of relative strength- very early reading, math, foreign language and music. She finds music theory comes very easily, and seems to find things like composing and arranging music cone naturally, seeing patterns and relationships. Like Mana's daughter, we never had concerns about comprehension, spelling was easy and basically automatic. And she also had traits which could be considered ASD-ish, but which are completely absent now (mainly sensory, loud-noise aversion and anxiety, emotionally hypersensitive.)
Our PDD-NOS symptoms were largely sensory avoidances of all types (oral, tactile etc), repetitive play and language delays. A little bit of everything but none was serious. Maybe because he was a boy or maybe because his language delay was still substantial at 2.5y, the psychologist gave us an ASD dx. The symptoms have disappeared or disappearing, so it is similar to what you are describing.
My son does well in music classes (piano), but he doesn't love it. He has no problems reading the notes, but his fine motor skills aren't advanced (they are age-appropriate, specially for a male child) so I have to incentivize every time it is time to practice.
We had concerns about reading comprehension because we were told we would have those issues by our psychologist who noted his hyperlexia. So far, based on scores it doesn't appear to be the case, but from reading ASD boards, it seems like the real struggle for diagnosed kids comes in the later elementary grades and he just finished the 1st (7.5yo) - way too early to tell, despite very high 90s in the reading comprehension, spelling, vocabulary and math. Did your DD have Cogat testing in school? Did she have verbal/nonverbal gap that is typical in hyperlexic kids?
I don't know if I believe in hyperlexia3 anymore. Statistically speaking, PDD-NOS dx is only 35% stable within the first three years for children diagnosed before 36 months, so a lot of kids recover from this mild form of ASD, and I assume some have hyperlexia too, but a lot don't. I don't think it is a specific hyperlexia type. I think it is a specific ASD presentation that isn't stable over time, and it is the children's typical IQs instead of hyperlexia that seems to improve the chances of recovery significantly.
