Effects of Psycholinguistic Variables on the Reading and Writing of Children In Initial Literacy: Regularity, Frequency, Length and Lexicality

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate the effects of psycholinguistic variables — orthographic regularity, lexical frequency, length, and lexicality — on reading and writing performance of words and pseudowords in children from 1st to 3rd grade of elementary school with difficulties in understanding the alphabetic principle.

Methods: This study adopted a quasi-experimental design with a comparison group, involving 48 children aged 6 to 9 years (M = 89.38 months). Reading and writing tasks of words and pseudowords were administered. Data were analyzed using factorial ANOVA with repeated measures, considering the investigated psycholinguistic variables.

Results: The findings revealed statistically significant effects of regularity, length, and frequency in reading, as well as significantly higher performance in the intervention group. In writing, regularity effects were more robust, suggesting greater reliance on the phonological route. Although lexicality did not show significant intragroup effects, the intervention group achieved higher accuracy in both word and pseudoword reading, indicating more efficient decoding processes.

Conclusion: The results support the dual-route model and suggest that, in early readers, reading and writing processing predominantly rely on grapheme–phoneme conversion, modulated by psycholinguistic variables. The findings highlight the importance of explicit phonics instruction to strengthen early literacy skills, especially among children with difficulties in understanding the alphabetic principle.