The theoretical orientation based on perceptual development, proposed by Piaget in 1961, is the starting point of this investigation. According to Piaget, the perception of the young child is "centered" on dominant aspects of the field. With maturity, perception becomes "decentered" and progressively freed from the field. The visual training materials used in this experiment were designed with this principle in mind. The hypothesis that training in perceptual activity would improve reading skills was proposed. Sixty second-grade Negro children attending an inner city school in Rochester were matched in perceptual activity and reading achievement and split into a control group and an experimental group. The control group studied from a commercial reading program (The Bank Street Readers), while the experimental group was trained with the series of nonverbal perceptual materials noted above. The experimental group made significantly greater progress in word form and word recognition than the control group. However, with regard to "Meaning of Opposites", they did more poorly. This seems to indicate that noverbal perceptual training did not affect reading comprehension. References are included. (WL)