Oral reading is less disrupted by mirror-image and upside-down text transformations for individuals affected by familial dyslexia than for non-affected readers. An analysis of errors made during oral reading of nonsense passages showed that most readers substituted real words for nonsense words, often of similar visual configurations. These findings were discussed in the context of what is known about cerebral functioning during reading. One interpretation of the present study is that affected readers used a reading strategy apparently mediated more by right than left hemisphere mechanisms, than did nonaffected readers.