Four questions guided this study of 11 noisy and/or overactive preschool boys: (1) Would children considered to be at risk for later diagnosis be more overactive than children who were not considered at risk? (2) How might parent/child social interchanges be categorized in a preschool population? (3) Would parent/child social interchanges be different for at risk children than they would be for controls? and, (4) Would parents in general attend more to noise than to overactive behaviors? To explore these questions, parents were observed for 30 minutes for indications of positive, negative, or unattending social interactions with their child. Note was taken of the child's appropriate or inappropriate motor activity. The child's negative, positive, or unattending social responses to the parent, as well as nonconversational sound made by the child, were noted. Selected from the same preschool population, 11 control subjects and their parents also were observed. Results indicated that the experimental children behaved no more inappropriately than did controls. Parents who were positive to their children tended to have children who were positive to them; inattentive parents tended to have inattentive children. Control parents and children were significantly more positive toward each other than were experimental parents. Experimental parents and children were significantly more inattentive than were controls. All parents were quite attuned to their children's noisy behavior. (Implications for hyperactivity research are pointed out.) (RH)