Research on the role of visual memory and serial recall in dyslexia is reviewed. Findings touch on feature theory, which proposes that information is held in the form of "features," and that students for example learn to discriminate letters by marking certain identifiable aspects. Other studies are described which focus on speed of processing visual information, verbal encoding of the symbols, confusion from phonetic characteristics, serial recall, and temporal order recall in nonverbal tasks. Critiques of the studies' assumptions and methodologies are presented. It is concluded that good and poor readers' differences in memory span and sequential ordering can be explained by linguistic terms and traced to dyslexic readers' verbal inadequacies in labeling, rehearsal, or chunking. (CL)