In search tasks that are otherwise identical, adults process strings of letters differently from strings of other shapes (Hammond & Green, 1982). This result has implications for word recognition and reading, and it is important to establish its developmental sequence. Two groups of primary school children and an adult control group completed a similar visual search task: determining whether a predesignated target character occurred in a subsequently displayed character string. The mean search latency decreased with age, and the results showed a qualitative difference in the processing of letters and shapes for even the youngest group. However, the left to right processing of letter strings does become more established with age.