A study investigated the question of whether normal and poor readers differ in the way they process sublexical structures in printed words. In a reading level design experiment, two matched groups of normal and poor readers (11 subjects of mean age 9.4 years and 11 subjects of mean age 12.6 years) were compared with regard to their use of sublexical orthographic information in a semantic evaluation task. There were two additional control groups, the first one consisting of 12 age-matched normal readers (mean age 12.4 years), the second one of 15 proficiently reading adults (mean age 19 years). Results showed that poor readers differentially process intra word information. Also striking and informative was the finding that poor readers proved to be relatively insensitive to repeated exposure of the experimental stimuli. (One figure of data is included; a list of the singular-plural pairs presented in the study is attached.) (Author/RS)