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I have relatively recently discovered that I (probably) have a condition called “hyperlexia”. This goes along with many other characteristics which taken together mean I should seek a diagnosis for being somewhere on the ASD spectrum. At the moment, I’m not too bothered about diagnosis; if I have some variety of neuroatypicality, it doesn’t impact my life at all negatively.
But anyway; hyperlexia. The textbook definition seems to be “the presence of advanced ability to read compared to the ability to understand spoken language”, It’s mostly diagnosed in children, and people “grow out” of it as their spoken language catches up. But there are a few knock-on effects which last, the main one being a prodigious vocabulary, and thereby a tendency to use exactly the right word for the intended meaning, even if that word has not been deployed in any serious way in decades or centuries or possibly in the language being spoken.
Obviously enough to anyone who knows me, I have that. But in my case, it also manifests as a “text first” view of the world. When someone talks to me, I “see” their speech as text. The “written” sentence will hang around in my mental field of vision for a bit, during which time it’s parsed, a few most likely intentions are worked out, the most likely one settled on, and a few notes written off about word choices. If I can’t settle on a likely intention - and I actually care enough to follow up, which isn’t always - I might ask someone to say something a different way, or tell them I can’t parse what they said. This is a little unfair, because often when I’m asked to rephrase, I can’t; I’ve already used the most exact phrasing I had available. When I’m really concentrating (reading difficult academic texts, and driving) I see “subtitles” overlaid on objects in my field of view: “chair”, “mug”, “ash tree”, “approaching car, correct lane”, and so forth.
I knew not everyone had the text first view, and definitely not the overlays. But the way one’s own mind works is the way we assume other people’s do, and while that’s in no way reliable, it’s a hard habit to break. I’ve read recently of people who don’t have an internal monologue (or dialogue, for that matter), and of people who can’t see things “in the mind’s eye”, a condition called aphantasia, and I still can’t get my head around either. Likewise, at some level, I have always assumed that text was important to other people in some way, if not to the same degree, as it is to me. In particular, if someone gives me a book, or sends me a link, or otherwise provides me with text, I will read it. I read virtually all the email that arrives in my inbox - it takes a while to get to it sometimes, and the same applies to books, particularly physical ones - but I will get there. This, it appears, isn’t true for other people.
I’ve had to do a lot of adjusting within my own head as to how other people think, and this is (as far as I can make out) a core part of the neuroatypical experience. But the notion that people not reading books I give them or links I send them is not some combination of failure on my part to understand them or deliberate rejection is one that has taken decades to settle in, and it’s only with the discovery of the concept of hyperlexia that I really have a model for it.
But anyway; hyperlexia. The textbook definition seems to be “the presence of advanced ability to read compared to the ability to understand spoken language”, It’s mostly diagnosed in children, and people “grow out” of it as their spoken language catches up. But there are a few knock-on effects which last, the main one being a prodigious vocabulary, and thereby a tendency to use exactly the right word for the intended meaning, even if that word has not been deployed in any serious way in decades or centuries or possibly in the language being spoken.
Obviously enough to anyone who knows me, I have that. But in my case, it also manifests as a “text first” view of the world. When someone talks to me, I “see” their speech as text. The “written” sentence will hang around in my mental field of vision for a bit, during which time it’s parsed, a few most likely intentions are worked out, the most likely one settled on, and a few notes written off about word choices. If I can’t settle on a likely intention - and I actually care enough to follow up, which isn’t always - I might ask someone to say something a different way, or tell them I can’t parse what they said. This is a little unfair, because often when I’m asked to rephrase, I can’t; I’ve already used the most exact phrasing I had available. When I’m really concentrating (reading difficult academic texts, and driving) I see “subtitles” overlaid on objects in my field of view: “chair”, “mug”, “ash tree”, “approaching car, correct lane”, and so forth.
I knew not everyone had the text first view, and definitely not the overlays. But the way one’s own mind works is the way we assume other people’s do, and while that’s in no way reliable, it’s a hard habit to break. I’ve read recently of people who don’t have an internal monologue (or dialogue, for that matter), and of people who can’t see things “in the mind’s eye”, a condition called aphantasia, and I still can’t get my head around either. Likewise, at some level, I have always assumed that text was important to other people in some way, if not to the same degree, as it is to me. In particular, if someone gives me a book, or sends me a link, or otherwise provides me with text, I will read it. I read virtually all the email that arrives in my inbox - it takes a while to get to it sometimes, and the same applies to books, particularly physical ones - but I will get there. This, it appears, isn’t true for other people.
I’ve had to do a lot of adjusting within my own head as to how other people think, and this is (as far as I can make out) a core part of the neuroatypical experience. But the notion that people not reading books I give them or links I send them is not some combination of failure on my part to understand them or deliberate rejection is one that has taken decades to settle in, and it’s only with the discovery of the concept of hyperlexia that I really have a model for it.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
The closest thing I have to your overlays is an involuntary inner-speech naming of the things I look at, but it only really happens when I'm very tired and trying to keep my shit together/navigate the world safely/remember to do stuff - like my brain is trying to nail the jelly of sensory experience to the wall of language. It's so interesting to imagine that as actual visible text superimposed on things.