Reading achievement tests have been used to identify deficiencies in inner city, poor readers; however, they often do not provide information about encoding strategies which lead some children to academic success. Immediate memory and visual analytic differences which contribute to the success of skilled readers are isolated in this study using 20 skilled and 20 poor readers in a sixth-grade urban school. The students' reading abilities were determined through word recognition and prose comprehension scores on the Silvaroli Classroom Reading Inventory. Skilled readers made fewer consonant memory errors in both high and low frequency positions. These sequence recall scores were also significantly different by sex, favoring females. Main effects between reading groups were not observed in their identification of similarities or discrimination of differences among pictures. However, skilled readers scored significantly higher in field independence than low readers. Implications for reading instruction are discussed. (Author/GSK)