The reaction times (RTs) of 48 elementary school students in two word identification tasks were recorded to gauge the effects of orthographic and phonic structures. The subjects, high ability and low ability students from grades four and five and from grades two and three, either matched a word to one of two pictures on display or decided if a visual display of letters made a word. In the picture task, the older and high ability readers had faster RTs. The low ability readers had extreme difficulties with low frequency words, and the meanings of words containing commonly taught phonic units were accessed faster than words lacking such elements. Although there was no main effect of orthography, there was a significant interaction between orthography and frequency. In the word/nonword task, older readers were much more adept than younger readers, but ability was not a significant factor. Apparently exposure to print helped determine "wordness." High frequency words were recognized more rapidly as real words, but to a lesser extent than in the picture condition. These results indicate that phonic structures are the critical factors in word identification, while orthographic redundancy takes a supporting role in the identification of low frequency words. (RL)