An investigation was made of the ways in which good readers (scoring at or above grade level on word attack and comprehension), difference-poor readers (scoring at or above grade level on word attack but below grade level on comprehension), and deficit-poor readers (scoring below grade level on word attack and comprehension) differ in their use of imagery while reading. The subjects, 30 fourth-grade students from each category, each read one passage at the third-grade level and one at the fourth grade level; they were instructed to stop at the end of each sentence, tell whether the sentence had caused a picture to form in their mind and, if so, to describe the picture. Subjects' responses were analyzed in terms of the number of images reported for each passage and the text dependency and completeness of the images. Analysis of the responses revealed significant differences between good readers and both difference-poor and deficit-poor readers in number of images reported and text dependency of images; these differences favored the good readers. Differences between the difference-poor and deficit-poor readers were not significant for any of the variables, and there were no significant differences among the reader groups in completeness of images. (Author/GW)