Social Class Differences in Taxonomic Skills: a matter of preference or habit,rather than competence 1

The taxonomic sorting responses of 56 lower‐class and 56 middle‐class children from two age groups (mean ages for these being 8 years 4 months and 12 years 3 months) were assessed under two instructional conditions. One condition involved ‘explicit’ cues to sort the task items taxonomically and the other condition involved only an ‘implicit’ requirement to do so. The social class groups sorted equally well under the ‘explicit’ instructions, but under the ‘implicit’ conditions, the performance of the younger lower‐class children was significantly poorer than that of the younger middle‐class children. The results are considered in terms of a discrepancy between performance (habit or preference) and competence in taxonomic tasks for younger lower‐class children.