As part of a year-long sociolinguistic study of pupil and teacher perceptions of classroom discourse, this study examined the possible effects of pupil status variables on pupil attention patterns. Subjects were 164 children and their teachers in six second, third, and fourth grade classrooms in a lower socioeconomic, multiethnic elementary school. To determine attention patterns, six teacher-planned language arts lessons were videotaped in each classroom over the course of the year. These lessons were played back in short segments on the same day to pupils who had participated in the lessons. Pupils were then individually asked at the end of each videotaped segment, "What did you hear anybody saying in that part of the lesson?" Each response was recorded verbatim on a 3 x 5 card, and the question, "What did you hear..." was repeated until the pupil could think of no more responses. A computer program was developed to compute mean ratios of attention for each pupil based on each of six pupil status variables. These variables were sex, ethnicity (Mexican-American, Anglo-American, Blacks, Asians, Portuguese, and Native Americans), entering reading achievement (as measured by the Metropolitan Achievement Test), status with peers (measured by a sociometric test), and teacher perceptions of pupils' communicative behavior in the classroom. In general, data demonstrated that for the pupils of this study there were identifiable attention patterns which appeared to relate to each of the status variables. (Author/MP)