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32 mothers taught their 6-or 8-yr-old children 1 of 2 laboratory classification tasks resembling a home or school activity. It was expected that dyads would compensate for the perceived difficulty of the school task for the younger children by providing greater assistance to this group than to the other 3 groups. The instructional interaction was coded in terms of amount of directives, open-ended questions, and nonverbal instruction provided by the mother; involvement of the child; and reviewing for the learning test. Following the instruction, children were tested on learning of the organization of items. MANOVA showed that the younger children in the school task did receive more instruction than those in the 3 other groups. This modification of instruction was accompanied by slightly better performance on the learning task by the younger children in the school task than by children in the other 3 groups. Results illustrate …