The purpose of this study was to investigate the Language Communication Skills Task (LCST), a technique developed to study the characteristics of effective language communication behavior of young children. The 112 subjects included in the study were randomly selected from three grade levels in an inner-city public elementary school located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Tasks were administered to one pair of children at a time. The children were randomly paired within each classroom of a given grade level, and each pair of children worked on both sets of tasks in two separate sessions, so that each child had a turn to play the receiver and presenter role. Results indicated that: the LCST is a reliable and valid technique for assessing particular characteristics of language communication skills of young children; an increase in the communication proficiency and the linguistic proficiencies was observed with age; outcomes of the criterion scores obtained from children of similar age range and social background depend on the quality of verbal messages transmitted by the presenter; subscores that contributed to the success of the criterion task were related to the position and location of the object and to the receiver's ability to ask questions and the presenter's ability to answer those questions. (RB)