Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Hyperlexia or high IQ

My son has been reading since the age of 2.5 and also was diagnosed with PDDNOS around the same age. His reading ability was always seen as hyperlexia and not a sign of giftedness despite more or less reasonable reading comprehension, probably because of his dx. His issues included speech delays, fine motor delays, sensory things and social inadequacies.

Well, now he is in the 2nd grade and doing well (lost his dx). They don't have grades yet, but he seems to be doing excellent academically. The whole class was given Cogat at the start of the year and the results just came back. Verbal/Quantitative/Nonverbal - 112/135/125. Composite - 130 (98%ile).

So is it still his hyperlexia or not? By that I mean - is it the fact that he started reading very early that is still affecting his scores like that or this is in fact reliable and an indication of specific giftedness (math)? How do I tell at the age of almost 8? Do hyperlexic kids do well on Cogat in general when they are young? Or WISC tests?

Does it make sense to continue with the gifted assessment (Iowa tests) or let him stay with his class and work on social interactions instead of being pulled into a much smaller group of kids? We have two separate tracks for gifted kids in our SD - math grade acceleration and gifted group, and he was already accepted into the first program, but the second requires more testing because his verbal is just average at this point. What would you recommend?

Thank you for responding. What was your experience with Cogat or WISC scores? Did they change over the years as other children caught up in terms of reading ability?

Huge difference - as in the scores went up from WPPSI-III to WISC or down?

Any experience with how being 2e affects Cogat scores? Are they as correlated in 2e kids with WISC as in NT average kids?

My 2e DS10 did both the Cogat and WISC a couple months apart (a little under age 9). His composite and FSIQ were the same but his GAI was much, much higher. His scores are kind of all over the place on both tests. His GAI seems to be the closest match the kid that we experience.

Not sure if that is transferable to your situation though. He is probably the opposite of hyperlexia if such a thing exists. He was speech delayed, a late/average reader (until around grade 2 when something clicked) and his writing is still painful to watch (LD in written expression). He has sensory things but that seems to be improving with time. FWIW socially he's done much better now that he's in a congregated ~HG class. The only kid that he remotely interacted with at his previous school turned out to be also gifted.

I'm not a professional, just a 2e parent, so take my advice for what it's worth (i.e., it's free lol!)... You have an indication that verbal is a relative weakness from the CogAT. The CogAT is a learned ability test, not an innate ability test like the WISC - so it's a test that's sometimes not exactly the best measure of giftedness. That said, the difference seems to tie into observations you've made in real life, which is a clue that there may be something to it. FWIW, high ability students who have reading challenges are sometimes not easy to diagnose in early elementary, especially if it's not classic dyslexia. I have a 2e dd who appeared to be an early reader yet once she hit 2nd grade she'd dropped back from being one of the highest testing readers in her class to just average, and by the end of 3rd grade it was obvious to most that she was no where near the ability in reading comprehension that she was in math/science. For her, that mattered, and the impact on achievement in other studies due to the differences in reading comprehension compound over time until the root issue was identified and she had individual tutoring. Reading is still an issue for her, even with all of that. So - if you suspect something is up, I'd recommend trying to understand it now rather than assume all is a-ok and then find out later on that your ds needs help with reading comprehension.

FWIW, it was a tremendous help to us to have our dd evaluated by a reading professional who's practice specializes in remediating dyslexia. Our dd is *not* classically dyslexic, but the testing package that the practice offered was thorough and was able to catch what the issue actually was, as well as give a road map for her tutor to follow in remediating.


I have an older 2e ds who's struggled with social issues due to an expressive language challenge. The best thing we've ever done for him is to place him with other HG+ kids when we can - there is no reason that a student should not be given access to whatever instruction he needs from his IEP because he's placed in a gifted program. It has been much easier for our ds to benefit from each of his remedial therapies when he's been placed with other similar intellectual ability students. If it was me, I'd move forward with the testing and advocate to get him into the full gifted program. Even if the advocacy doesn't work, at the very least, you'll have the data from the additional testing and that might help with understanding his abilities better.

Best wishes,

polarbear

To the specific question of gifted assessment, I would say that there is very little risk to proceeding with further assessment. I tend to take the position that more information is better.

It seems to me, though, that your larger question is, is he really gifted, or "just" hyperlexic? We've had discussions about this before on this board. I will reiterate that the key distinction between hyperlexia as a "disorder" and early reading skills in the gifted context is comprehension.

Decoding does take some cognition, but not as much as you would think, especially for someone who does not have particular obstacles in one of the three pillars of reading decoding (phonological awareness, phonological memory, rapid naming/automaticity). I have personally evaluated multiple students with IQs below 70 (some well below) who could decode (read) and encode (spell) at an entirely age-appropriate level of accuracy and fluency (adult-level, for the secondary-age students). None of them, however, could comprehend at a level beyond their cognition, especially when asked to make inferences. We also expect the average eight or nine year old to be able to master the entire range of phonetic decoding skills. This tells you something about the level of cognition necessary to master phonetic decoding--it's not that high. It also explains the old teacher's tale that early readers will "even out" by third grade. It's not that truly advanced readers level off, it's that the ceiling on phonetic decoding skills is only about that high. And some of the other early readers were really early decoders, not early comprehenders.

There are also multiple pathways to early reading, some of which are not fundamentally language-based. (It's often more visual than verbal.) So that an early reader may actually be gifted in a visual-spatial or pattern-recognition area, rather than language itself.

Then there is the third question of twice exceptionality, which, given his history, is probably an area that deserves additional attention, and possibly evaluation. If no concerns are identified, then maybe that is reassuring. If they are, then that gives you something to focus on for remediation.

Thank you for your responses.

Cogat7 verbal section in the 2nd grade is all pictorial - so do you think his lower score is really related to poor reading comprehension in any way if the test involved no reading? More like poor listening comprehension may be?

I agree his early reading was more visual-spatial in nature and always felt like a passion for pattern recognition. He didn't really like puzzles that much (he wasn't a stereotypical ASD child doing puzzles all day long), but absolutely loved video games and was exceptionally good at them. Also he learned to sight read music very quickly at the age of 6 and while he isn't super gifted in the piano area, he is definitely a good decoder when it comes to music notes.

He does have an IEP at school for speech and is evaluated regularly. The only concern mentioned on the semi-annual reports is speech fluency.

Well, I guess I know now the answer to my own question... We finally decided to test him. So it wasn't hyperlexia as in a disability. It was just a very smart boy figuring things out for himself even as young as 2.5y....

VCI - 146
VSI - 129
FRI - 137
WMI - 125
PSI - 132

WISC-V FSIQ - 146

Nice to hear the follow-up. And he has a pleasingly balanced profile on the whole (though language is still a personal strength).

I can't reconcile his speech delay with 146 VCI.... How does one explain something like this? He was PDD-NOS, never Aspergers (I read that Aspies test high in VCI). He was never talented with words or oververbose. In fact he stutters and isn't eloquent at all. The only indication of his advanced language development was his hyperlexia.

Is this typical to have a balanced profile for IQs that high? His sister's scores are similarly high in the first three categories - VCI, VSI and FRI (VCI and VSI are reversed - 130 and 144), but her WMI and PSI scores are high average or average, resulting in lower FSIQ - 134.

He scored 19 in similarities. What is tested there?