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Three age groups (7-, 8-, and 9-year-olds) and three socioeconomic status (SES) groups (lower, middle, and upper) were assessed on four cognitive variablesclassification, class inclusion, conservation of number, and conservation of substance-and on communication encoding effectiveness. It was shown that in addition to age and SES, general cognitive ability accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in communication encoding.Communication performance is assessed by presenting sets of identical arrays of stimuli (such as pictures) to dyads of children. The encoder (speaker) must describe a target stimulus so that the decoder (listener) can select it from the array. Both age-related and social-class differences in communication ability have been documented, with the performance of younger children inferior to that of older children (Glucksberg, Krauss, & Higgins, 1975) and the performance of lower socioeconomic status (SES) children inferior to that of middle-SES children (Baldwin, McFarlane, & Garvey, 1971;Quay, Mathews, & Schwarzmueller, 1977). Although some attempts have been made to explain these differences, there has been no empirical identification of particular variables that actually determine or mediate the age or social-class communication variation (Glucksberg et al., 1975). The findings of both age-related differences (Piaget & Inhelder, 1966) and social-class differences (Overton, Wagner, & Dolinsky, 1971) in cognitive skills suggest that age and SES may affect communication encoding primarily through cognitive level.

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