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Traditionally, reading disabled children have been characterized as suffering a performance or process deficit that prevents them from acquiring the knowledge and skills underlying proficient reading and comprehension. Such explanations raise some logical problems. Process oriented theories do not adequately explain the specificity nor address the severity of the disability. The process-deficit view has also run up against disconfirming empirical evidence. An alternative conceptualization of the nature and growth of reading disability states that the fundamental problem lies in the difficulty in mastering the complex irregular rules of English symbol-sound correspondences. This in turn hampers development of rapid word decoding. Having to expend effort at decoding for meaning, the reader has little capacity for higher order reading and comprehension skills. Previous research, as well as recent tests using regular and irregular vowel sounds and words of varying difficulty in symbol-sound correspondence, bear out the hypothesis that mastery of these three skills is primary to reading. Severity of the reading disability stems from the interdependence of these three skills. (HTH)