Recent years have seen significant advancement in our understanding of the mental processes involved in reading. However, serious controversies remain. One of the most fundamental of these controversies concerns the nature of processing in reading single words aloud. One theory states that reading aloud is accomplished solely using parallel processing (ie letters are translated to sounds all at the same time). The other theory states that reading aloud is accomplished in part using serial processing (ie letters are translated to sounds one at a time). This project will address this core issue in three experiments that use an innovative cross-linguistic approach involving Japanese, Serbian, and English participants. These experiments will investigate whether the number of letters in a single stimulus has an influence on the time that it takes to read that stimulus aloud. The existence of a length effect in particular circumstances would implicate a serial process in reading. The cross-linguistic approach adopted in this project will permit far greater experimental control than has previously been possible in this field. For this reason, the findings from this project are expected to have major theoretical significance. This research may also have more general clinical and pedagogical implications.