The hypothesis that disparities in children's associative responses are due to differences in verbal achievement was tested. Also tested was the assumption that for black inner-city children, conventionality in associative responding is accomplished at the expense of increasing verbal repertories and elaborating the meaning of words of varying degrees of familiarity. The subjects were 60 black and 60 white sixth-grade children in inner-city schools. The subjects were divided into eight equal-sized groups on the basis of sex, race, level of reading achievement, and intellectual ability. A 50-item word association test was administered orally, and the responses were analyzed. It was concluded that there were achievement differences for the sample in the tendency to give paradigmatic responses, in the number of different words, and in the strength of the primary response. Semantic enrichment was noted in low- and in high-achievement groups. There was no significant difference in the conventionality of black and white subjects as measured by the strength of the primary response; however, the mean number of different response words was greater for the black than for the white subjects. (DB)