Enhanced interest in letters and numbers in autistic children – Molecular Autism
Background An intense and precocious interest in written material, together with a discrepancy between decoding and reading comprehension skills are defining criteria for hyperlexia, which is found in up to 20% of autistic individuals. It may represent the extreme end of a broader interest in written material in autism. This study examines the magnitude and nature of the interest in written material in a large population of autistic and non-autistic children. Methods All 701 children (391 autistic, 310 non-autistic) under the age of 7 referred to an autism assessment clinic over a span of 4 years were included. Ordinal logistic regressions assessed the association between diagnosis and the level of interest in letters and numbers. A nested sample of parents of 138 autistic, 99 non-autistic clinical, and 76 typically developing (TD) children completed a detailed questionnaire. Cox proportional hazards models analyzed the age of emergence of these interests. Linear regressions evaluated