ch 9, comorbidities: "Hyperlexia is characterized by an advanced ability to sound out words (decoding skills). Students with hyperlexia often learn to read very early without being explicitly taught, are strongly drawn to the written word, and are often excellent spellers." hmmm, teaching myself to read at age 3 has been a point in favor of autism, but i've always been a bad speller and had trouble with reversing my letters for quite a long time so maybe i don't have hyperlexia?