This study was designed to consider effects of age, sex, intelligence, lateral usage, and lateral awareness on young children's performance of spatial organization tasks. The sample consisted of 79 Caucasian, middle socioeconomic status nursery school children (mean C.A. 57.80, S.D. 4.47 months), 44 boys and 35 girls. Spatial organization was operationally defined as ability to copy patterns by drawing and walking in an expended spatial field and to identify by verbal response the correct spatial position of objects in relation to each other and to self. No association of lateral awareness or lateral usage measures and the spatial organization tasks was identified. A clear sex difference favoring boys was found in pattern copying in an expanded spatial field. Boys had significantly higher objective scores in pattern walking than did girls; they also appeared markedly more task oriented. Findings were consistent with the field dependence-independence construct, and suggest that sex differences in styles of field organization are identifiable by the late preschool age period. Differences in task orientation, cue selection, and cue organization may well be keys to understanding children's strategies of problem solving; these warrant further study. (Author)