The pamphlet focused first on questions concerned with the relative ability of deaf and hearing students to visually process words when presented letter by letter, and with relationships existing among deaf students between the ability to process words presented tachistoscopically, letter by letter, and the ability of the same student to process words through finger spelling and through speech reading. Then reported was a study involving 33 deaf and 19 hearing students at the post-secondary level in which the processing of verbal information (words) visually and the relationship of the deaf students' ability to identify words presented in rapid letter-by-letter graphic sequence and ability to read finger spelling and to speech read were investigated. A comparison of the relative ability of deaf and hearing post-secondary subjects to correctly identify printed meaningful words when their letters were presented sequentially indicated that the deaf subjects were superior under all conditions tested. Lack of a statistically significant correlation between the ability to read printed words whose letters are presented sequentially and the ability to read words formed by speech suggested that the perception of these two tasks was different. (Author/CB)