It has been discovered that the word may be learned without first learning the separate letters which compose it. Spelling and reading are thus psychologically far from identical. In perceiving a word, all parts are not equally stressed. The first half and the upper half of the word have a great advantage over the last and lower halves. In fluent reading, the eye moves by jerks across the line, making three to five pauses in crossing an ordinary page of printed matter. Oral reading requires about 1.6 more pauses per line than silent reading, and the average duration of these pauses is longer. Thus oral reading requires 44 to 64 per cent more perception time than does silent reading. The unit of perception in reading may be the letter, the word, the phrase, the sentence, or even the paragraph, according to the training of the pupil, the degree of skill attained, and the extent to which he “skims.” The letter or the word as the unit of perception results in halting and expressionless oral reading, and in retarded silent reading. These are some of the results of fundamental studies in the psychology of reading, which help us to understand cases of individual difficulty. Recently Gates has made intensive study of reading and spelling by the methods of correlation, with special reference to disability. He finds that partial and multiple correlations reveal an ability or abilities common to all perceptual tests involving _words_ as materials, sufficient to cause fairly high correlations between them, as compared with the correlations between these tests and tests not involving words. By hypothesis, this common factor is defined as an ability to perceive clearly the significant details of words. The multiple correlations of these tests with spelling are higher than with reading, and it is suggested that those who have a very favorable form of word-perception are to some extent learning (or relearning) to spell during the course of ordinary reading. Gates also points out that poor reading is not caused by bad habits of eye-movement, but on the contrary, faulty eye-movements are merely symptomatic of the fact that the child cannot read well. Not having mastered the mechanics of reading, his eyes move hither and yon at random, seeking, by trial and error methods, to get at the matter before him. Wrong eye-movements can be cured by teaching the child how to read. The child cannot be taught to read by correcting his eye-movements. It should be added, finally, that all the functions referred to above, and possibly others that analysis has not yet made evident, must be synthesized in an automatic set of habits before the child becomes proficient in the mechanics of reading. III. COMPREHENSION IN READING