A comparison was made of the intellectual ability of groups of black and white children--ages 4 to 6---who were matched on various demographic variables. The aim of the study was to examine the comparative performance of the children on the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence in order to observe any emergent patterns across the age range on verbal, performance, and full-scale IQ's. A total of 132 matched black-white pairs were obtained. The six age levels were: 4, 4-1/2, 5, 5-1/2, 6, and 6-1/2. Comparisons were made for each of the six age levels separately and also for combined adjacent age groups. A probability level of .01 was selected to indicate significant !Q differences. Results showed that all the differences favored the whites and that the differences for verbal IQ and full-scale IQ were significant for each of the three age groups. However, the differences in performance IQ were not significant at ages 5-5-1/2 and 6-6-1/2. The difference decreased dramatically between the 4-4-1/2 and 5-5-1/2 age groups. When the six age groups were treated separately, the difference in performance IQ decreased with increasing age in almost a linear fashion. In the present study, matched groups of black and white children ages 5-6-1/2 did not differ significantly on WPPSI Performance IQ. Although the whites performed significantly better than the blacks on verbal and full-scale IQ, the differences tended to be about 10 points. This is one-third less than the 15-point difference that has been reported as the characteristic difference. (DB)