AN OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH ON VISUAL DISCRIMINATION SHOWS A TREND FROM THE WHOLE-WORD VIEW TO A COMBINATION OF LETTER-DISCRIMINATION AND THE WHOLE-WORD METHOD. TEN STUDIES CITED IN THIS ARTICLE ATTEMPTED TO ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS--(1) WOULD NONVERBAL STIMULI FACILITATE READING PERFORMANCE, (2) DO CHILDREN FOCUS ON THE SHAPE OF THE WORD OR ON INDIVIDUAL LETTERS WITHIN THE WORD, (3) IS TRAINING WITH WHOLE WORDS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN TRAINING WITH ISOLATED LETTERS, (4) WHAT SKILLS TRANSFER FROM THESE TWO TYPES OF TRAINING, (5) WHAT IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE COMBINATION OF CUES FOR HELPING CHILDREN LEARN SIGHT WORDS, AND (6) DOES KNOWLEDGE OF LETTER NAMES AFFECT LETTER-DISCRIMINATION TRAINING. SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR BEGINNING READING INSTRUCTION BASED ON THIS REVIEW OF RECENT RESEARCH SUGGEST (1) THAT TRAINING IN VISUAL DISCRIMINATION SHOULD BEGIN WITH WORD AND LETTER STIMULI RATHER THAN WITH NONVERBAL GRAPHIC STIMULI, (2) THAT THE EARLIEST VISUAL DISCRIMINATION EXERCISE IN KINDERGARTEN SHOULD USE LETTER STIMULI, AND (3) THAT VISUAL DISCRIMINATION TRAINING SHOULD INCLUDE EXERCISES IN ASSOCIATING SOUND AND MEANING WITH VISUAL FORM. WHILE THESE IMPLICATIONS ARE BASED ON THE RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS, UNCONTROLLED CLASSROOM STUDIES WOULD SHOW WHETHER OR NOT THEY ARE FEASIBLE. THIS PAPER WAS PRESENTED AT THE INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE (SEATTLE, MAY 4-6, 1967). (NS)