It is shown that six phenomena often associated with dyslexia may be attributed to the lack of a visual, Cartesian frame of reference. These phenomena are: 1, reading errors due to letter reversal, inversion, or rotation; 2, form recognition of all classes of mono-oriented objects which is independent of the figure's egocentric orientation; 3, defective visual sequential scanning, resulting in confused letter and word order; 4, poor visual balance performance; 5, the failure to acquire nonspatial ordering relations, including temporal relations and tenses; and 6, the characteristic intellectual profile of severely retarded readers, namely, PIQ/VIQ greater than 1, where PIQ is the performance IQ score and VIQ the verbal IQ score on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). The latter phenomenon is dependent on 2 and 5 above. A strategy for further research is outlined.