The student of child behavior recognizes that there is considerable community of ideas, as expressed in speech, among children in nursery school groups. Children tend to talk about the same things and in much the same terms, but whether or not these common verbal responses are attributable to the cultural contagion of a common environment is hard to determine in a nursery school setting. Similarity in the verbal responses of children who have not enjoyed association with their peers except through informal neighborhood play may throw some sidelights upon the extent to which the cultural background of young children is standardized even in the absence of schooling of any sort. The object of this paper, therefore, is to examine some of the responses commonly made by children between the ages of two and five, as to the frequency with which certain concepts are mentioned, the sex and age differences that obtain in the expression of them, and the function they may serve in the child's adjustment to his world. It is to be hoped that analysis will reveal which responses are common by virtue of their being expressions of common needs and wants of the child, and which are merely a product of early culturization; in other words, which are outgrowths from within the child's own body, and which are superimposed from without. The records used in this analysis are diary-type accounts of the child's all-day visit to a health center in the course of which he is subjected to a number of examinations with periods of rest, play and a meal interspaced. The record contains a verbatim account of the child's speech during a thirty to forty-five minute play period, together with briefer notes on the child's behavior upon arrival at the Center, at examinations, at meal and at rest. These records are obtained at six months' intervals on each child on the occasion of his regular visits to the Center for Research in Child Health and Development.2 Visits occur within a week of the half-yearly birth date; hence, there is no ambiguity in the age grouping of children. For the present study 336 such records of the child's day are used, 168 of each sex, distributed by ages as follows: 20 records at two years, 40 at two and one-half, 50 at three, three and one-half and four years, 60 at four and one-half and 66 at five years. No age level is entirely discrete as to personnel, however, as there are from one to four records on each child. Hence, the records of a given child may be tabulated at four successive age levels. Because of this overlapping of cases, age differences will not be emphasized in the discussion.