To assess children's perception of socially significant speech variants, taped speech samples from lower-urban white, lower-urban Negro, upper-urban white, and upper-urban Negro nine-year-old boys were presented to Ss with characteristics similar to speakers. The Ss' task was to identify the speaker by pointing to one of four pictures depicting the speaker types. Although findings were in the predicted direction, analysis of variance yielded no significant effects. Despite the clearly apparent lower mean scores observed for the LUN Ss, the size of the within variance precluded rejection of the hypotheses. The consistency of responses to certain speaker types merits further exploration.
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