A study was conducted to identify the capacities of young children to demonstrate differential communicative responsiveness to normal children (same age and older) and to older, retarded children of an equal mental age in the context of a collaborative problem solving task. Eleven normally developing children (aged six to eight years) were the target subjects. Three were observed interacting with same-age, same-sex, normally developing children; four were observed interacting with older, same-sex, normally developing children; and four were observed interacting with older, same-sex, retarded children who were functioning at approximately the same developmental level as the normal children. The children worked in dyads. In the same-age dyads, communication was symmetrical; both partners produced similar numbers of total utterances, action directives, responses, and judgments of the task. In the mixed-age dyads, conversational dominance fluctuated between the older and younger child in different dyads. In the normal/retarded dyads, the normal children dominated conversation, creating an assymmetrical communication pattern. (Author/FL)