As part of a larger study of developmental deficits in the skills of automaticity of name retrieval, phonological awareness, and memory span and their role in reading disabilities, a study tested 13 average and 14 poor fourth-grade readers for digit and letter naming speed, phonological awareness, and digit span. Among the reading skills assessed were single word identification, word attack, and reading comprehension. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Tests-Revised provided an estimate of verbal IQ. Reading comprehension was assessed by the Canadian Test of Basic Skills. Accuracy of single word reading and of nonsense word decoding were assessed by two subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test, Word Identification and Word Attack. Three phonological awareness tests were administered: (1) the Auditory Analysis Test; (2) the Odd Word Out task of Bradley and Bryant; and (3) a phonological task in which children repeated three- and four-syllable real and nonsense words pronounced by the examiner. Short term memory was assessed by the Digit Span subtest from the WISC-R (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised). Results indicated that digit naming speed, phonological awareness, and short term memory contributed variance to reading skills. However, phonological awareness tests were not intercorrelated and, with one exception, did not correlate with tests of naming speed or memory. (Six tables of data are included, and 23 references are appended.) (MM)