Four groups, each consisting of ten school pupils, were induced to verbal learning `without specified' goal, with `easy' goal, `difficult' goal and an abstract goal of `do your best', respectively, through verbal instructions and then were exposed to a list of 30 nonsense syllables to learn. It seemed that quantitatively difficult goal was a more fruitful regulator of learning than the other two goals, namely, a quantitatively` easy' goal and an abstract goal of `do your best'.