An exploratory study investigated the communicative behaviors that differentiate talkative from reticent children. Four three-year-old girls who varied in degree of talkativeness were observed in naturalistic interactions with six to eight previously unfamiliar adults. All four children had demonstrated age-appropriate knowledge of linguistic structure (both receptively and expressively) on several standardized tests. However, in spontaneous conversation, the length and syntactic complexity of language used was substantially greater for the most talkative child. Discourse differences included a greater tendency to respond to comments and self-initiate questions as talkativeness increased. In addition, these children differentially influenced their adult conversational partners' discourse, but not their average length of utterance. (Author/FL)