Abstract: The study was to explore the effect of word learning age in primary school children's Chinese character recognition. Three groups of characters which were selected from the Chinese textbooks of grades 1,3,5 respectively were used as stimuli. The subjects were primary school children from grades 1,3,5 who were required to read the characters loudly. The result showed a strong effect of word learning age in primary school children  naming of Chinese characters.

Key words: learning age(LA), naming task, mental lexicon, familiarity, frequency