Although lower socioeconomic status (SES) black children have been shown to be inferior to middle-SES white children in communication accuracy, whether the problem is in encoding (production), decoding (comprehension), or both is not clear. To evaluate encoding and decoding separately, tape recordings of picture descriptions were obtained from lower-SES black, lower-SES white, and middle-SES white nine-year old encoders. Each encoder's descriptions were then played to a lower-SES black, lower-SES white, and middle-SES white decoder who had to select the pictures described from arrays of similar pictures. The groups were compared on encoding and decoding. Encoding differences were found between lower and middle-SES groups, but not between black and white groups of the same social class. (Author/MKM)