Those are just plain old electrolytes. But they are related to polyelectrolytes. Put them in water, and they just break apart into positive and negative ions. Good ol' table salt, NaCl, is an electrolyte. Put it in water and it splits into positive sodium ions and negative chloride ions.
Polyelectrolytes are polymers that do the same thing.
They fall apart in water. All those negative charges are going to repel each other. This does weird things to the polymer chain. Normal uncharged polymer molecules, when they're in solution tend to be tangled up in what bigshot scientists call a random coil . Think about it.