The study involving 11 reading disabled and 9 normal elementary school children evaluated the relative efficacy of practice with feedback on accuracy and practice with feedback on both accuracy and response rate related to response speed on word reading performance. Ss were exposed to randomized blocks of 10 high frequency words and 20 words which appeared infrequently in elementary reading materials. The low frequency words were taught over a period of 2 weeks within lessons designed to incorporate principles such as distributed practice, reduced unit size, and training in varied contexts. The group of 30 words were photographed onto individual slides and projected onto a wall. Vocalization speeds for each child were recorded. In the practice only (P) condition, children were exposed to the words and received information about the accuracy of their responses. In the practice plus feedback (PPF) condition, Ss received information regarding their vocalization speed as well as accuracy. Findings indicated that disabled readers had significantly slower vocalization times for both high and low frequency words than did their normal peers. The normal readers evidenced relatively stable prformance across trials under both conditions, while disabled readers had a more rapidly decelerating curve under PPF than under P. Results demonstrated that informative feedback serves as a cue for successive trials and as a reinforcer for accurate and relatively speedy word recognition for reading disabled children. (Author)