This study is an initial investigation of the effects of grade level, item content and type of probe on children's understanding of communicative ineptness. It was hypothesized that children's recognition and avoidance of inept communications would increase as a function of age and that recognition of ineptness would precede the ability to avoid ineptness. Twenty-four subjects in each of three grade levels (third, sixth and ninth) were interviewed with a scale consisting of 24 narrative vignettes in which the subject was required to imagine him/herself interacting with another child of the same age. Three types of vignettes were constructed: action vignettes reflected an actor's intention to get another person to engage in a desired activity; deflection vignettes portrayed an actor's intention to avoid an action desired by someone else; and feeling vignettes depicted an actor's intention to make another person feel good or better about something. Recognition of ineptness and improvement scores were obtained for each vignette. It was found that, especially at the third and sixth grade levels, feeling vignettes were more difficult for children to understand than were action and deflection vignettes. The expectation that recognition of ineptness would precede ability to improve on it was supported by the data, but this finding may have been an artifact of the assessment strategy. (Author/RH)