 Reading can be an uncomfortable and difficult task for some people. Symptoms include unpleasant somatic and perceptual effects, such as eye-strain, headache, and blurred text, despite normal visual acuity. This condition has been called Visual Discomfort, but little is known about the symptoms and frequency of reading problems associated with this disorder. Several studies have proposed that Visual Discomfort is caused by increased noise in the visual system due to spreading cortical activation across different spatial frequency channels. This study examines the prevalence and severity of visual discomfort in a college student population and tests the noisy visual system hypothesis. 