This paper reports the outcomes of a correlational study that examined the relationships between visual and auditory perceptual skills, on the one hand, and comprehension that is independent of decoding, on the other. Five sets of test scores--a visual perceptual test (Coloured Progressive Matrices), an auditory perceptual test (Auditory Motor Placement), a listening and reading comprehension test (Durrell Listening-Reading Series), and a single word decoding test (Word Recognition subtest; Diagnostic Reading Scales)--were compared. The resulting correlation coefficients showed a highly significant relationship between visual perceptual skills and listening comprehension, and visual perceptual skills and reading comprehension when the effect of decoding skills was controlled. Auditory perceptual skills were more closely related to reading comprehension than to listening comprehension. It is suggested that although decoding skills explain much of the variance in reading comprehension, visual perceptual skills also contribute to the explanation of this variance. (Author)