In this study the relationship between mother's teaching style (verbal instruction vs. demonstration) and the child's performance on four memory tests was investigated. Mothers' teaching style with 9-year-old children was observed in an induced teaching situation in the home, in a Guatemalan Maya town. In the induced teaching situation, the mother instructed her child in making an object out of tinkertoys. Her behavior was coded in categories involving verbal instruction and physical demonstration. The memory tests revealed verbal and visual factors, rather than unitary memory ability. Thirty-one children were selected typifying the following memory patterns: high performance on verbal with low on visual, high on all, low on all, and low on verbal with high on visual. The percentage of mother's verbal instruction for each group (incidence of verbal instruction divided by incidence of verbal instruction plus incidence of demonstration) was 68%, 64%, 42%, and 32%, respectively. Kruskal-Wallace one-way analysis of variance showed the differences between the groups to be significant (p < 02). The results indicate that experience with verbal instruction, as opposed to demonstration in context, may play an important role in performance on cognitive tests, particularly in tests with a strong verbal component. (Author/SB)