A study examined the developmental nature of early literacy in relation to variations in task demands, general cognitive development, and socioeconomic background. Subjects (N=32) were placed in two groups of 16 suburban Chicago kindergarten students that were designated either low income group (LIG) or high income group (HIG). The subjects, interviewed separately between March and May, were involved in four tasks: (1) writing isolated words and writing words as constituents of sentences; (2) writing a story and then rereading it; (3) three Piagetian tasks--conservation of number, seriation, and classification; and (4) the Metropolitan Readiness Test (Level II). Analyses of results were based on detailed transcriptions of the taped interviews, with two trained raters independently scoring each subject's response on each task. Task differences arrayed themselves logically from the least difference in own name and some single word dictation to the greatest difference in writing connected discourse. The results of this study support the suggestion that literacy development follows a complex pattern, even though--overall--children do progress toward conventional writing. This research uncovered subtle variations in the early patterns of literacy behaviors among children of different income levels, and these differences could hold implications for instructional issues. (Bar graphs of results are included.) (AEW)