A communicator's skill can be represented as the social distance across which he has an effect upon audiences. In a hypothetical “sun and planets” model, the communicator reaches audiences whose orbits are increasingly distant from himself; these audiences are expected to become more heterogeneous and less predictable with greater (social) distance. In a preliminary experiment, 24 compositions written by second‐grade Mexican‐American children were presented to a panel of six adult judges. Each judge chose the six compositions he considered “best” (most proficient or preferred) and the six he considered “worst.” The frequencies with which particular compositions were chosen and the level of agreement among judges were studied. Two tentative findings were discussed: the pattern of choices of “worst” compositions was not the mirror image of the pattern of choices of “best” compositions, and there was high agreement on choices for “best” compositions among the three judges who seemed mos