A study examined adult low-literate readers' knowledge of their cognitive skills. By better knowing this clientele from both the cognitive and metacognitive angles, several objectives could be met, including remedying a lack of knowledge in their assessment, and building a valid curriculum content closer to their needs. Many studies suggest that a metacognitive approach can give better results than an approach based solely on the mastery of cognitive competencies. The five female and four male low-literate readers studied (in Quebec) obtained scores below the norm on the digit span memory test, confirming some psycholinguistic hypotheses. Short-term memory has a limited retention capacity and processes information mainly in a phonological way. The fact that good readers generally decode well helps short-term information processing. Faster word processing avoids an overload in short-term memory. Conversely, the beginning reader who decodes with difficulties rapidly clutters his or her short-term memory, which impairs comprehension. Data on metacognitive comprehension shows that few low-literate readers are aware of the relation between reading comprehension and decoding skills. Literate persons (such as the seven men and four women in a control group) establish this link more easily. In spite of these cognitive limitations, low-literate and literate readers do share some metacognitive knowledge. Two tables and a list of tasks and cognitive skills are included. (Contains 38 references.) (Author/RS)