Abstract
Proficient reading is a skill developed through years of experience. Various factors affecting reading like word length, word frequency, meaningfulness of the word, orthographic complexity, etc., have been controlled and rapid reading tasks assigned to subjects. Subjects had had atleast 10 years of formal education in Kannada. The experiment was carried out using a Macintosh computer. Results showed a difference in reading rates between words and non-words suggesting the usage of whole-word reading route in word reading. However, since a difference in reading rates of orthographically simple and orthographicaly complex words were found, it was concluded that the Phonologically Mediated route also contributes to word reading along with the whole word reading.