Dyslexia and hyperlexia in bilinguals.

This study explores the nature of reading difficulties of two bilinguals in Kannada and English, which vary in their orthographic depth and script layout. VN and MS manifest two different types of reading disabilities, dyslexia and hyperlexia, respectively. The performance of VN was below average on Kannada and English tests of phonemic awareness, spelling, and pseudoword naming. Despite his poor decoding skills, the listening comprehension skill both at the word level and at the sentence level of VN was within the normal range. VN, therefore, can be described to have developmental dyslexia. MS, in contrast, showed good decoding ability in both Kannada and English, but his listening and reading comprehension were poor in both languages. MS, therefore, displays a pattern of reading disability akin to that of hyperlexia. The deficits of both VN and MS, although dissimilar from each other, cut across the linguistic boundaries and affect their performance in both Kannada and English.