The distribution of errors in children's responses in four elicitation tests of their color-naming abilities is explored with a view to clarifying states of ignorance. Subjects include 47 Polynesian children ranging in age from 2 to 12 years. The four experiments include a naming task, two identification tasks and a mapping task. Children are rank-ordered according to the number of basic color category-color term associations acquired and subdivided into three groups based upon this rank ordering. Their errors are classified as random, admissions of ignorance and other. The distribution of these error types across the groups differs significantly as determined by an analysis of variance. Admissions of ignorance and other errors remain fairly constant across groups while the tendency for random guessing which dominates a child's responses during his early development decreases markedly over time. It is suggested that children's ignorance at the earliest developmental stages can be characterized as "not knowing what one doesn't know." Ignorance is progressively qualified at subsequent stages by an increasing "awareness of what one doesn't know." (Author)