Black and White children's use of standard English at 7, 9, and 12 years of age.

A Berko-type task, requiring an S to derive the present, plural, possessive, and time extension forms of nonsense syllables, was re-administered to 64 Black and White 7th graders previously tested in Grades 2 and 4. Results indicate (a) linguistic convergence for all Ss between 4th and 7th grades on possessive, time extension, and plural tasks and (b) linguistic divergence between Black and White Ss over time on the present tense task. It is emphasized that findings be interpreted with caution because of the effect of nonrandom attrition (44%) on the longitudinally collected data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)