Summary. The application of a Sentence Reading Test and a Non‐Verbal Intelligence Test to the whole of the third year pupils in twenty‐two junior schools gave results for 1,205 children. Of the 139 who had a reading quotient of <80, seventy had standardized non‐verbal scores ≥90. Fifty of these seventy backward readers were paired, individually, with average to good readers, matched for non‐verbal test score, social class, sex and school. These two groups undertook a number of individual tests. The backward readers showed no deficit in performance on an oral test of language structure, but a poorer performance on a variety of tests involving spatial relationships and left‐right discrimination; also a greater ‘rotation effect’ on a test involving the copying of abstract designs.