On hermetic reading abilities.

Pigott (1987) looked at every paper on hyperlexia in autism up to that year.

The author asked: why can some autistic kids read words far above their age, yet not understand what they read?

He built a theory that two brain roads for reading run on different memory fuels.

The review says hyperlexic readers can sound out words because their declarative memory is strong.

But they cannot link those words to meaning because their procedural memory is weak.

So the lexicon works, yet stays cut off from wider knowledge.

Craddock et al. (1994) later timed two autistic savant readers. They read faster than peers until the words were scrambled, proving the kids lean on letter-to-sound rules, not meaning. This backs E’s idea.

Koegel et al. (2014) scanned autistic adults while they read. The brain showed extra parietal work and no sign of semantic sorting. Again, phonics without meaning, just as E predicted.

Bailey et al. (2022) warn most reading work is English-only. Their scoping review says we must test if the dual-road problem holds in other tongues.

If a child can decode but not comprehend, do not drill more phonics. Instead, shore up the weak road: use scripts, pictures, and acted-out sentences to glue word to world. Start every new book by anchoring the topic to what the child already knows, then check meaning after each page.