The purpose of this study was to frame the outlines of an interpersonal theory derived from exploratory research among adolescent reading failures. The theory postulates that adolescent reading failure syndrome results from and is maintained by conscious elements of choice manifested in the adolescent's perception preferences. The affective readiness for failure in reading tasks is, therefore, a deeply seated psychological generator of the reading failure disturbance showing extreme resistance to modification through traditional remedial reading school practices, but worthy of as vigorous an exploration as has been undertaken into the more familiar cognitive parameters of successful reading performance. The subjects, 180 seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth grade Black male students, were evaluated through personal interviews, questionnaires, and observation over an 80-week period by the researcher. Results indicate that adolescent reading failure is accompanied by perception preferences for retreat into one of three views of the world depending upon the interpersonal and intrapersonal pressures of the moment. Such preferences are characterized by: (1) unsocialized aggression, reflecting overt and covert hostile disobedience, quarrelsomeness, physical and verbal aggressiveness, vengefulness, and destructiveness; (2) social approval anxiety, reflecting continuous anxiety, unrealistic fears, immaturity, self-consciousness, inhibition and frustration; or (3) unsocialized withdrawal, reflecting seclusiveness, detachment, sensitivity, shyness, and a flagging desire to form close personal relationships. (Author/HMV)