36 American and African mothers and their children in 3 age cohorts from 6 to 36 months of age were asked to interact around age-appropriate teaching tasks. The interactional behaviors were videotaped and scored in 1-sec epochs. Major behavioral differences between cultural groups and tasks were demonstrated. These differences included an increased frequency of repeated instructions, hand pulling, and lesser use of verbalization by the African mothers. They tended to use repeated focusing and modeling of the task in its entirety, and used little reinforcement for their infants' efforts except simple confirmation of success. The American mothers used much praise, encouragement, and reflective speech in their efforts to shape the child's activity. The African infants tended to be persistent in their efforts, used social interactions with their mothers often, and showed no resistance to hand tugging or pulling. The American children demonstrated more diverse play activities with the toys, shorter attention spans with some tasks, and frustration with tugging or restraining activities. Both cultural groups demonstrated contingent, reciprocal, and affectively positive interactions. These differences and similarities were explored within the context of culture-specific values, expectations for children, and the goals for and assumptions of the teaching process. The teaching situation was shown to be invaluable as a window into the universal and culture-specific aspects of mother-child interaction.