The effect of words' spelling regularity on children and adults' memory for visual (written) words

Word processing has long been a focus of interest for many psychologists. The present study aimed to examine the effect of orthographic regularity on visual word memory in children and adults through a quantitative study using a quasi-experimental design. The sample consisted of 60 female elementary school students (mean age = 11.5 years) from a primary school in Ramsar, and 60 female undergraduate students from various humanities disciplines (mean age = 21.25 years) at the University of Guilan. Participants were selected through convenience sampling. The research instrument was a researcher-made test, whose face and content validity were confirmed by two elementary school teachers and two subject-matter experts. The reliability of the instrument was examined using the test-retest method, showing high reliability, with a strong correlation between the two administrations (r = 0.87). Prior to the main test, a practice session was conducted to familiarize each participant with the procedure. The normality of data distribution was assessed through skewness analysis, and homogeneity of variances between groups was tested using Levene’s test. Data were analyzed using independent samples t-tests and paired samples t-tests. The findings indicated that orthographic regularity had no significant effect on visual word memory when analyzed separately for children and adults. However, a significant difference was found between children and adults in processing both regular and irregular words, with adults performing better than children in both recalling and retaining these words. The theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.