Wow... he sounds so much like my DS8. Yours has more advanced visual-spacial, but then again, none of us (in my family, I mean) have ever tested as PG (just HG).
Anyway, my DS8 has receptive and expressive language disorder as one of his diagnoses (which are still ongoing, lol! sigh)
When I help him with reading, although we do work on phonics, I encourage him to use his strength which is memorizing the words. He's not quite as extreme as your son in that he can change font and even read cursive (he's older though), but he MUCH prefers to memorize rather than decode.
Btw, my son has had FIVE normal (and properly done) hearing tests. He was prone to ear infections when he was younger, which thankfully haven't damaged his hearing. He was asymptomatic many times, so I don't know how many ear infections he had during those important early years of speech acquisition.
He tested negative for CAPD (central auditory processing disorder) but does have a significant binaural integration imbalance (his brain prefers his right ear).
As to the maturity aspect: when I initially wanted to pursue CAPD testing I was told we'd have to wait until DS was 8 because... drum roll... auditory processing can sometimes be delayed in normal development, and usually catches up at about 8. Our audiologist thinks that DS did in fact have an audio processing delay and has now caught up enough to not meet the criteria for the disorder. Meanwhile the binaural integration issue should even out by the time he's 12ish.
Meanwhile... interestingly... he's making new progress with oral language in school (he's in French Immersion). He has lagged behind his classmates in French since about grade 1 (in KG they were all new to it and DS's language issues hadn't presented yet).
The other day I just checked the on-line (school database) copy of his IEP progress report and his "oral" and "decoding" (i.e. phonics) marks had been increased... to "meeting expectations" (grade level). This is the first time he's ever been at grade level in these two categories. He had just turned eight a week or so prior to the report being changed. Interesting timing!!
