Selected by the International Reading Association's Committee on Psycholinguistics and Reading, the papers in this volume were first presented at the 1968 IRA Preconvention Institute: (1) "Reading Is Only Incidentally Visual" (Kolers) suggests that the teaching of reading should move away from the purely visual; (2) "Some Thoughts on Spelling" (Halle) discusses the principle that orthographies must contain no symbols that reflect the operation of phonological rules; (3) "Words and Morphemes in Reading" (Goodman) explores the lack of one-to-one correspondence between words and morphemes and the implications for reading instruction; (4) "Some Language and Cultural Differences in a Theory of Reading" (Shuy) focuses on the child's environment and how he learns language symbolization; (5) "An Operational Definition of Comprehension Instruction" (Bormuth) argues that instruction in reading comprehension is poor as a result of little valuable research; (6) "Psycholinguistic Implications for a Systems of Communication Model" (Ruddell) discusses selected variables related to decoding and comprehension; and (7) "The Teaching of Phonics and Comprehension: A Linguistic Evaluation" (Wardhaugh) discusses the premises behind existing methods of beginning reading instruction. The final chapter, "Component Skills in Beginning Reading" (Calfee and Venezky) appears in the ERIC system as ED 064 655. (HS)