A study examined preschoolers' metacognitive self-regulatory behaviors. It was hypothesized that tasks that omitted or greatly decreased verbalization would allow preschool children to exhibit evidence of metacognitive self-regulatory behaviors. Subjects were 20 preschool children, half identified as special needs and half designated as typical students. Self-regulatory behaviors documented for analysis included: (1) subvocalization during exposure to models the child was to reproduce; (2) task-relevant processing verbalizations made during the execution of a task; (3) questions that related to the execution of the task; (4) behaviors indicating the child was organizing an approach to the tasks; and (5) automatic self-corrections of performance when the child saw the models a second time. Results indicated that while both types of subjects exhibited a variety of metacognitive self-regulatory behaviors, the typical subjects exhibited significantly more of them than the special needs children. The finding of self-regulatory behaviors in preschoolers is contrary to the traditional deficit characterization of the metacognitive abilities of preschoolers and supports the idea of a developmental continuum in the emergence of metacognitive competence. Tables of data and 10 references are included. (HTH)