A study investigated the top-down and bottom-up reading skill patterns of 34 kindergarten children who, as precocious readers, were reading at or above the third grade level. The children were administered the reading comprehension subtest of a standardized achievement test, five subtests on an intelligence measure, and a battery of reading skills tasks. A preliminary analysis of the results indicated no substantial or statistically reliable correlations between scores on the general comprehension measure and any of the skill measures. This finding suggests that there are many different specific skills on which a precocious reader can draw in such a testing situation; thus no one skill would be associated with success on the comprehension measure. The possiblity of identifying separable sets of top-down and bottom-up reading skills in precocious readers was reduced by the relatively high correlations between the two sets of measures. The data suggest, however, that precocious readers may be more flexible than less able readers in capitalizing on skills that are well developed in order to compensate for areas of relative weakness. (FL)