The question of whether reading methods interact differentially with student sequencing abilities was investigated. One hundred and thirty-one children from three schools in Palo Alto, California, were given reading instruction using a linguistic approach (Palo Alto Reading Program), and 115 children from three Palo Alto schools used a whole-word approach (MacMillan, Harper and Row, and Scott-Foresman). A battery of pretests was administered in September 1969, and a battery of post-tests was given in January 1970, after an instructional period of 70 days. The hypotheses tested were (1) children high in sequencing ability will exhibit higher reading achievement and less learning avoidance behavior in a whole word method than in a linguistic method and (2) children low in sequencing ability will exhibit higher reading achievement and lower learning avoidance behavior in a linguistic method than in a whole word method. The results showed that children high in sequencing ability exhibited higher reading achievement in the linguistic treatment than in the whole word method, while children low in sequencing ability exhibited lower reading achievement in the linguistic treatment than in the whole word treatment. Sequencing ability was negatively correlated with learning avoidance behavior in the whole-word treatment, but was not correlated in the linguistic treatment. References and tables are given. (DE)